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THE HIBBERT JOURNAL 
VOL. VII. 1908-1909 



BRITISH EDITORIAL BOARD. 

J. SUTHERLAND BLACK, LL.D., London. 
The Rev. Canon T. K. CHEYNE, Litt.D., D.D., Oxford. 
The Rev. JAMES DRUMMOND, LL.D., Litt.D., Oxford. 
Professor PERCY GARDNER, Litt.D., Oxford. 
Professor HENRY JONES, LL.D., D.Litt., Glasgow. 
The Very Rev. G. W. KITCHIN, D.D., Dean of Durham. 
Principal Sir OLIVER LODGE, D.Sc., F.R.S., Birmingham. 
The Rev. JAS. MOFFATT, D.D., Broughty Ferry, N.B. 
Professor J. H. MUIRHEAD, M.A., Birmingham. 
Sir EDWARD RUSSELL, Liverpool. 

The Right Rev. C. W. STUBBS, D.D., Bishop of Truro. 
Professor JAMES WARD, LL.D., Cambridge. 



AMERICAN EDITORIAL BOARD. 

Professor B. W. BACON, D.D., Professor of New Testament Criticism and 

Exegesis, Yale. 
Professor WM. ADAMS BROWN, Roosevelt Professor of Systematic Theology, 

Union Theological Seminary. 

Dr E. B. CRAIG HE AD, President of the Tulane University of Louisiana. 
The Rev. Dr SAMUEL A. ELIOT, President of the American Unitarian 

Association. 
Professor G. H. HOWISON, Mills Professor of Philosophy, University of 

California. 
Professor C. J. KEYSER, Adrain Professor of Mathematics, Columbia 

University. 
Professor A. O. LOVEJOY, Professor of Philosophy, Washington University, 

St Louis. 
Professor A. C. M'GIFFERT, Professor of Church History, Union Theological 

Seminary. 

The Rev. R. HEBER NEWTON, D.D. 

Professor JOSIAH ROYCE, Professor of Philosophy, Harvard. 
Professor GEORGE E. VINCENT, Professor of Sociology, University of Chicago. 
Dr R. S. WOODWARD, President of the Carnegie Institution, Washington. 



THE 



HIBBERT JOURNAL 

A QUARTERLY REVIEW OF 

RELIGION, THEOLOGY, AND 

PHILOSOPHY 



EDITED BY 



L. P. JACKS, M.A. 



AND 



G. DA WES HICKS, M.A., Ph.D., Litt.D. 



VOLUME VII 

OCTOBER 1908 JULT 1909 



LONDON 
WILLIAMS AND NORGATE 

1909 



Bt 

I 

Hf 



THE 

HIBBERT JOURNAL 



THE MISCARRIAGE OF LIFE IN 
THE WEST. 

P. RAMANATHAN, C.M.G., K.C., 

H.M. Solicitor-General, Ceylon. 

How interesting to every thoughtful person is the problem 
whether his life is carrying him to the proper goal or not ! 
The mind that runs indiscreetly with the senses, as they go 
a-hunting for sights, sound, smells, touches, and tastes, is much 
too occupied with external things to grasp the importance of 
this issue. When the senses get wearied of their respective 
works, they fall asleep and rise freshened for the hunt again. 
At a later stage of existence, when the evils of self-indulgence 
have been repeatedly felt and much pain caused thereby to the 
mind, it refuses to run promiscuously with the senses ; and the 
senses, deprived of the willing support of the mind, remain 
proportionately undrawn by sense-objects. It is at this period 
of comparative peace that the mind comes to know its separate- 
ness from the senses and its capacity for righteous work by 
control of the senses, formation of sound thoughts, and correla- 
tion of them in the way that leads to the discovery of what lies 
under the surface of things. What is the first deep truth 
learnt in this manner, as the result or fruit of worldly experi- 
ence, by the analytic mind which refuses to be in bondage to 
VOL. VII. No. 1. i 1 



2 THE HIBBERT JOURNAL 

the senses ? It is this the beauty of things perceived by the 
senses turns into ugliness, and the joys arising from them change 
into sorrows. The more clearly one sees that the attrac- 
tions of nature, including the human body, and the pleasures 
which spring from a contemplation of them, are as perishable 
as quicksand heaps in a flowing river, the more urgent to him 
becomes the solution of the problem whether his life is carrying 
him to the proper destination or not. For if the mind is con- 
vinced that it is folly to be wedded too deeply to things 
perceivable by the senses, owing to the certainty of their 
decay and disappearance, it will assuredly turn from such 
passing shows and look eagerly for something more real in 
the world to occupy itself with, and delight in, without the 
interruptions of sorrow, anger, and hate. Such is the experi- 
ence of men and women on whom the truth has dawned that 
beautiful forms and sensuous pleasures wither like the grass of 
the field. It is to this class of persons that the question of 
the miscarriage of life will be of interest. 

We have next to consider what life means in such expres- 
sions as " the miscarriage of life," " the right use of life," and 
" is life worth caring for ? " In regard to these phrases, 
which, be it noted, rise instinctively to the lips of those who 
are not too fond of sensuous enjoyments, it will not do to think 
of life as a round of pleasures, or as joys mixed with sorrows, 
or as animate existence with its phases of growth and decay. 
None of these meanings will help us to answer rightly the 
question raised, for in it is involved the profound truth, little 
known to the sensuous-minded, but universally attested by 
sanctified sages as an incontrovertible fact, that souls have 
been endowed with instruments of breath, knowledge, and 
action, as well as different spheres of training (such as home, 
school and profession, married life and society, government and 
politics, industry and amusement), for the beneficent purpose 
of emancipating themselves from corruption ; and therefore, 
unless " life " is taken to mean the aggregate of those ministers 
of the soul who labour for it, the question whether one's " life " 



MISCARRIAGE OF LIFE IN THE WEST 3 

is "carrying" one to his destination or not, cannot be 
answered properly. 

The truth that " life," in one of its deeper senses, means 
the ministers of the soul, has been recognised by thoughtful 
men in the West. About thirty years ago, when the views 
of Schopenhauer and Hartmann began to prevail and the 
question " Is life worth living ? " became the topic of the day, 
it was conceded that " life " was a mystery in all its forms, 
vegetable, animal, and human, and various were the solutions 
offered in the monthly magazines of the period. Speaking of 
human life, St George Mivart said : " An inevitable instinct 
impels us all to seek our own happiness and to gratify our 
passions and desires, though we are by no means compelled 
always in all cases to choose whatever we most like. Yet, 
however we may suffer ourselves to be borne passively along 
the pleasure-seeking current, our reason can, even while we 
are so borne along, ask the question : Are we rational if we 
acquiesce in happiness as the supreme and deliberate aim of 
our life ? The answer of reason to itself must surely be that 
the rational end of life is that which should be its end, i.e. 
which ought to be its end ; and * ought ' is meaningless without 
the conception 'duty.'" He came to the conclusion that 
" life " meant fulfilment of duty ; for such fulfilment the will 
should be exercised in accordance with reason and apart from 
the pleasures of the moment ; and that the exercise of the 
will in this manner was the highest act of which we are 
capable, and that to which all our lower passions and faculties 
minister (art. on "The Meaning of Life," in the Nineteenth 
Century, March 1879). 

Reason and will are, indeed, most important parts of life. 
But life is more than reason and will, for the " life " of a man 
is said to be extinct when his " breath " ceases to function in 
the body. What is this " breath " ? It is not a passing 
breeze chased away by another which follows it. The breath 
of life, that is, the " breath " called " life " (as in the expression 
" the continent of Europe," which means the continent called 



4 THE HIBBERT JOURNAL 

Europe) is not a passing gust, but an aerially-constituted 
power which expires and inspires in a settled rhythmic manner, 
while located in the body, and which in the act of inspiring 
draws the atmospheric air into the channels of the body, and 
in the act of expiring expels it in regular succession, and which 
further makes many other delicate adjustments conducive to 
the safety and proper working of the mind and body. It is 
called prdna in Sanskrit, or life, or the principle of breath, or 
the breather, because, say the sages, it is not only powerful 
but also intelligent in its own way, and accommodates itself 
to every conceivable position, and keeps order among other 
aerially-constituted powers within us, when disarrangement 
takes place. Sages skilled in prdndydma yoga, or the art of 
breath-control, and their apt pupils, are equally certain that the 
prdna (or the breath named life) in the body permeates every 
other instrument of the soul, and imparts to them both initiatory 
movement and endurance in their respective works. Hence the 
word prdna, or life, is often used to include all its colleagues. 

The greatest of these colleagues is the mind (manas), the 
thinker, or the intelligent and powerful entity which makes 
thought out of sense-percepts, and correlates them in the 
most wonderful manner. In the Bhagavad Gttd is declared 
the truth that the mind is the instrument by which the 
resurrection of the soul or spirit is effected. " The uplifting 
of the soul (dtma uddhdranam) from corruption has to be done 
by the mind. Since mind only is the ally of the soul, and 
mind only the enemy of the soul, the mind should not be 
made impure by letting it run on sensuous things" (vi. 5). 
A mind that capers about indiscreetly with the senses becomes 
quite useless for the edification of the soul. It cannot build 
it up in love and light. If the ministers of the soul do not 
assiduously keep themselves clear of the pollutions of worldli- 
ness, which is another name for that element of corruption in 
man which impels him to be selfish and to indulge freely in 
the grosser forms of sensuous enjoyment, they will not be able 
to guide or carry the soul to its proper haven of Light and 



MISCARRIAGE OF LIFE IN THE WEST 5 

Love. Overcome by the wild fancies of ignorance and hate, 
they will drift further and further away from that glorious 
port with their precious charge. This drifting away of the 
mind into sensuous planes, and its inability to serve the spirit 
as it should, is the meaning of " life miscarrying." It must be 
carefully remembered that we are now concerned with inner, 
not outward things ; that the Light and Love to be reached, 
as well as the soul and its guides or carriers, are housed in the 
body ; that the journey of life does not mean the movement 
of the body from one place to another in the objective world, 
but the turning of the mind from things worldly to things 
godly, and the awakening of the soul to a knowledge of God ; 
and that unless the mind and the other ministers of the soul 
are cultured and strengthened, under the direction of apt 
teachers, for lawful and loveful works, they cannot quicken 
the soul, i.e. make the soul to recognise its fallen condition 
and rise to its own spiritual state, so as to know (as only it 
can know) and be at one with God, the Eternal Being, who 
is in all, through all, and above all, who is imperceptible to 
the senses and unthinkable by the mind, but who is knowable 
by the purified soul. It is positively true that the awakening 
of the soul to God does not take place till the interest of its 
ministers turns from the things of the flesh to the things of 
the spirit (soul). The moment the mind's attention or gaze 
is fixed steadily inwards, the soul awakens, like the lotus-bud 
in the morning sun, and gives all its energy to the study of 
itself and its relationship with God and the subjective and 
objective worlds. 

The solution of the problem of the miscarriage of life thus 
necessitates a careful examination and ascertainment of 

(1) The being and properties of the soul ; 

(2) The nature of the corrupt power which holds the soul 

in bondage ; 

(3) The being and ways of God, who mercifully emancipates 

the soul and takes it back, when purified, to be in 
constant fellowship with Him ; 



6 THE HIBBERT JOURNAL 

(4) The nature and functions of the different instruments 

with which the soul is endowed for the attainment of 
spiritual freedom ; 

(5) The spheres of training ordained for the culture and 

purification of the instruments of the soul ; and 

(6) The special methods by which the soul may be 

sanctified, that is, isolated from all the entanglements 
of corruption. 

This is a severe course of study and training which will tax 
one's powers to the utmost, but it is fully worth the trouble, 
because it is the very kind of education which, when combined 
with exercises in godliness, leads to actual knowledge of God, 
and to a complete emancipation from sorrow, anger, fear, and 
hate. 

Supposing we have students qualified in mind and body to 
hear and understand the truths relating to spiritual life, our 
first duty to them is to free them from the vain convictions to 
which they have been bred from their infancy to disentangle 
them from the bonds of common mistake as well as of learned 
ignorance. Every land and age has its own obstructions to the 
comprehension and practice of the principles of true life. The 
difficulties which beset the seeker in India at the present day, 
for instance, are different from those of the seeker in Europe. 
A consideration of the main causes of the miscarriage of life in 
India such as, firstly, the corporeal caste system which has 
all but strangled the intellectual caste system taught by sages 
under the name of Varnasrama Dharma, for the practical 
advancement of all who would be spiritual in every part of the 
globe ; and, secondly, the utter forgetfulness of the truth that 
the works section of the Vedas and Agamas was designed only 
for awakening the spirit to a knowledge of itself and of God- 
is not called for in this paper. For the present we must 
concern ourselves with the obstacles in Christendom to spiritual 
progress. 

In Western lands there is little effort made to distinguish 
between the kernel and the shell the essence and the excres- 



MISCARRIAGE OF LIFE IN THE WEST 7 

cences of religion. Notwithstanding the assurance of Christ 
Jesus that His doctrines existed from the foundation of the 
world, those who call themselves Christians attach the greatest 
importance to the history of verbal controversies in the 
different centuries following His era. More than thirty years 
ago, Mr Gladstone bewailed "the singularly multiform and 
confused aspect of religious thought in Christendom," and said : 
" At every point there start into action multitudes of aimless 
or erratic forces, crossing and jostling one another, and refusing 
not only to be governed, but even to be classified. Any 
attempt to group them, however slightly and however roughly, 
if not hopeless, is daring" (art. on "The Courses of Religious 
Thought," in the Contemp. Rev., June 1876). The numerous 
controversies which have arisen in and out of Christian 
councils are due to the literary ability as well as the spiritual 
ignorance of those learned in the words of the Bible. Not 
being delivered from " the oldness of the letter," as observed 
by St Paul, which corresponds to the purva paksham of 
Indian epistemology, they have been too prone to differentiate 
and too contentious, and this attitude of the mind is fatal to 
the religious life itself. Such persons know not what religion 
truly is, and are therefore addicted to the habit of attaching 
needless importance to unessential growths in Christian belief. 
Narrow in mind, they seek to monopolise God, though He is 
everywhere, and has manifested Himself from the remotest 
times, aeons before Jesus was sanctified and sent into Judaea, 
up to the present day, to everyone who has renounced at heart 
the deceptive attractions of the world and longed for grace. 
How few in Christendom know that religion does not consist 
in words, professions, and ceremonies, but in heartfelt longing 
for the Imperishable Substrate of all things ! The names and 
forms, ideals and practices of every creed, are intended only to 
create a love for God, a bond of union between God and man. 
Religion, from religare, to bind, is the love-bond which unites 
man to God. This love of God is the essence of religion. 
When it has arisen in the heart, it is destined to grow fuller 



8 THE HIBBERT JOURNAL 

and fuller by association with godly men and by frequent 
meditation on things spiritual, and to enter into union with 
Love Infinite, even as a river fed by perennial streams is 
bound to join the ocean, howsoever distant. Articles of faith 
and dogmatic teachings, being only methods for causing the 
love of God to spring in the heart, are not religion in the 
highest sense of the term, for the religious man is he who lives 
for God through love of God. He is not controversial, defiant, 
or monopolising. He is not jealous that God has manifested 
Himself beyond the bounds of his own sect. He welcomes 
with joy the tidings of divine grace wheresoever shown, for he 
knows that his God lives and reigns far beyond his own little 
neighbourhood. 

Another grand difficulty in the West is the triumvirate of 
theology, philosophy, and science, which have made sceptics 
and agnostics of seekers by thousands. For fifteen centuries 
after the days of Jesus, the people implicitly believed the 
bishops and clergy of the Church. But when the fierce 
controversies of the Reformation arose, and the current of 
thought initiated by Bacon, Descartes, Locke and others began 
to flow steadily, widened by the discoveries of physical science 
and astronomy, the intelligent among the faithful were dis- 
mayed to find that the authorities of the Church were not, in 
the words of St Paul, "apt to teach or convince the gain- 
sayers." Their faith was shaken when the increasing sense of 
law produced by the study of physical sciences forced them 
"more and more to attribute all the phenomena that meet 
them in actual life or history to normal, rather than to 
abnormal, agencies " (Lecky's History of Rationalism in 
Europe, ch. iii.). They could not believe in abnormal revela- 
tions and miracles, nor accept the usual interpretations of the 
hard sayings of the Bible. The ancient claim of theology to 
speak with authority on all subjects of inquiry was rejected, 
and indeed relinquished : " It restricts itself to the region of 
faith, and leaves to philosophy and science the region of 
inquiry " (Lewes' History of Philosophy, Prolog. 1). In this 



MISCARRIAGE OF LIFE IN THE WEST 9 

field of free investigation, science deals with demonstrable or 
verifiable facts only, and philosophy consists of the interpreta- 
tions of such facts and their possible causes, as also of purely 
speculative thought respecting things that transcend the senses. 
The West is ruled by this strange coalition. But there is no 
cohesion or consistency in it. The standpoints of view of the 
theologian, the philosopher, and the scientist are different from 
each other. The theologian proclaims God as the goal of life, 
believing the testimony of the Biblical sages. The philosopher 
and the scientist have no such belief or goal, being prepared to 
go wherever the imaginative or hypothetical reasoning of the 
one, or the matter-of-fact experiment (on bodies perceivable 
by the senses) of the other, takes them. " We have scanned 
the heavens and the earth, but we have no evidence of God's 
existence ; we do not know Him," say they. It is thus not 
difficult to see that the so-called triumvirate is a house divided 
against itself. The three powers confound and unsettle each 
other, and eveiyone else, by their discordant notes. Hence, it 
is usual in the West to say : " Science declares so and so, 
philosophy so and so, and theology so and so ; and now what 
do you say ? " And the reply is : "1 don't know, I am sure, 
but I think it is so and so." What progress is possible in this 
unsettled state of knowledge, in this reign of controversy ? 

Nevertheless, the West is firmly persuaded that it is 
progressing satisfactorily. It is proud of its "success" in 
industry, science, and politics, and claims to have created, and 
to live in, an age of progress. " Fifty years of ever-broadening 
commerce, fifty years of ever-brightening science, and fifty 
years of ever- widening empire," represent the cry of those who 
are satisfied with material prosperity, even though its silver 
lines are set on a background of squalid poverty and lawless 
schemes of revolution. Are we really living in an age of 
progress, or is it only a flattering fancy which obstructs a true 
perspective of life and lulls people to slumber in error, in 
imminent peril of losing a life's opportunity ? The subject is 
worthy of careful analysis. 



10 THE HIBBERT JOURNAL 

What is the true position of Western nations in regard to 
what is called industrial progress ? 

Industry is the diligent employment of the mind, hand, 
and eye (or any other sense) on the production of something 
that is useful or ornamental; and industrial progress is the 
constant exercise of the creative talent upon the production of 
things for sensuous enjoyment. To the producer his occupa- 
tion brings some money by the sale of his work, so that he is 
able to supply himself and those whom he loves with the 
needs and comforts of the body. A more enduring return to 
the steadfast worker is the improvement of his mind. When 
it is set upon industrial work regularly, it becomes steady, 
sharp, and discriminating, and therefore thinks straight and 
sees clear, especially if it is literate and law-abiding. It then 
becomes reflective. During this stage of introspection it 
discovers signs of the spirit within, and its interest in matters 
concerning the spirit grows to be keen. Even as in days gone 
by the mind stood united to the things of the flesh, it now 
prefers union with the spirit. Once carnally-minded and there- 
fore disturbed easily, given to hate, wanting in restfulness and 
crass in understanding, it is now spiritually -minded, and there- 
fore forgiving, charitable, peaceful, and enlightened. This is 
the history of the mind set on industrial work. That work, 
done ably and with a law-abiding heart, is indeed the way to 
the goal called spiritual-mindedness, or that state of the mind 
wherein it does not allow itself to be drawn this way or that 
way by the likes and dislikes of the body, but remains true to 
the spirit, which is love and light. 

Two classes of benefits flow from industrial work, one 
external and the other internal. The external benefits are 
the supplying of increased comforts and conveniences to the 
body and the embellishing of houses and cities. But these 
are all perishable. Taught to make bubbles out of soap and 
water, a boy gave his mind to that work, blew the bubbles 
through his tube, and contemplated them as they floated 
gaily in the air. The hand that worked to produce the 



MISCARRIAGE OF LIFE IN THE WEST 11 

glittering effect rested, as the mind and eye watched the 
vainglorious thing fading in the distance. The boy felt 
happy, but that happiness was as fleeting as the bubble itself. 
In a similar way did Alexander the Great and Napoleon the 
First project empires, which rose and burst even as they were 
looking on. The external benefits of work, industrial or 
political, are comparatively of little value to the worker 
himself. To him, far more important is the internal benefit 
accruing to the mind which has done its work ably and 
justly. Such a mind, being cleansed and strengthened, 
becomes qualified for the higher work of calm reflection and 
meditation, by which alone the spirit within may be found. 
If men, individually or collectively, rest content with the 
external benefits of industrial work, without striving hard for 
the internal benefits also, the chief end of industrial work 
will be missed. 

The expansion of the industrial arts at home and the 
attainment of commercial supremacy abroad are not com- 
mendable if they stand divorced from spirituality. The spread 
of perishable wares for the convenience and adornment of 
perishable bodies is vain if the producers and carriers of 
them do not know how to save their souls from wreck and 
ruin in the wide seas of sensuousness and mean competition, 
and if the consumers of the goods do not take care to buy 
only what they really need and so prevent the pampering of the 
senses, which promotes the growth of emotion, irreverence, and 
frivolity. The industry and commerce of England, which are 
said to be the " foundations of her pride," are, in the absence 
of love for the welfare of the spirit, like fuel to the fire of 
sensuousness, which, alas ! has been burning in the people 
for some centuries, and slowly withering what is holy and 
beautiful in them. If the artisans and traders of the country 
live for the spirit, while working hard for the maintenance of 
the body and the improvement of the cities, they will be a 
shining light and perpetual source of joy to their brethren at 
home and to everyone else abroad. 



12 THE HIBBERT JOURNAL 

Next comes this question How does the West stand in 
truth in regard to what is called scientific progress? 

With the microscope, telescope, and the chemical-tube 
the man of Western science assays all things perceivable by 
the senses, turns into horse-power the manifestations of nature, 
called of old " flesh," and utilises its brute forces either for the 
more rapid production and transport of commodities, or for the 
destruction of enemies by novel implements of warfare. The 
scope of Western science is thus limited, as in the case of 
the industrial arts, to that which relates to the body. Its 
methods of inquiry prevent it from the study of the invisible 
spirit. Though it recognises the fact that the visible came 
from the invisible, it declines to predicate anything of the 
invisible. It says nothing of the spirit, or of the bondage 
of the spirit to darkness, or of the extrication of the 
spirit therefrom. It has no spiritual discernment. Indeed, 
it does not know what that expression means. It has 
not heard of, much less experienced, the fact that there 
are three kinds of knowledge available: firstly, what the 
spirit knows through the senses; secondly, what it knows 
through the deductions and inductions of the mind ; and 
thirdly, what it knows directly, without the intervention 
of the senses or the mind. Western science is ignorant 
of the distinction between worldly knowledge and godly 
knowledge. Worldly knowledge consists of the reports 
of the senses and the inferences of the mind; and godly 
knowledge consists of what the soul only can know when 
it stands isolate as most assuredly it can by due culture 
from the senses and the mind. Western science is wholly 
ignorant of this isolation or alone - becoming of the soul, 
so well known to sanctified sages, and called by them in 
Sanscrit Kaivalyam, JSanti, Ekatvam, and in Greek Mono- 
geneia. Ignorant of the absolute existence of the invisible 
spirit and of its capacity to know God during isolation, 
and to know the world in combination with the senses and 
the mind, and obliged by the particular methods of inquiry 



MISCARRIAGE OF LIFE IN THE WEST 13 

which Western science has imposed upon itself, it disowns 
the spirit, the most real thing in the universe. There is no 
justification in truth for remaining in this state of agnosticism 
and continuing to be an ally of atheism. If it would only 
step out of its narrow sense-plane and study under proper 
guidance the deep-lying truths of the larger soul-plane, called 
the kingdom of the spirit, as assiduously as it has studied the 
secrets of the kingdom of nature, what a change would there 
be in the heart of all Europe ! It would pass from carnal- 
mindedness, and that bondage of the intellect to the senses 
which is complacently called rationalism, to spiritual-minded- 
ness, poise, and love of God. Its cities would be abodes of 
righteousness and peace, and not of selfishness, strife, and 
gnawing desire. Then, indeed, should we speak of the glories 
of scientific progress. 

And now of political progress. 

In the East the populace admit that, owing to want of 
means and leisure, they are obliged to forego the advantages 
of learning and culture save in exceptional cases. Respecting 
the law as the doctrine of neighbourly love enforced by the 
government of the country, they mind their own business, 
and rely patiently and trustfully on the guidance of their 
spiritual teachers and the consideration of the wealthy and 
the learned, who are themselves not unmindful of the spirit. 
This ideal of living in the world, not for the pampering of the 
senses but for the purification of the spirit and for its develop- 
ment in love and true knowledge, necessarily involves not only 
a genuine obedience to the law and to every constituted 
authority, such as parent, teacher, employer, magistrate, and 
other rulers of the people, but also a constant desire to practise 
forbearance on the part of both the rulers and the ruled. In 
these circumstances the word " government " does not mean 
one body of people domineering over another body, but all 
classes of minds governing themselves by the dictates of 
neighbourly love as interpreted by time-honoured customs. 

The early history of man proves that social relationships 



14 THE HIBBERT JOURNAL 

originally rested on consanguinity, common language, and 
common worship, and that any new question which did not 
come within the purview of an existing custom had to be 
decided by the unanimous consent of all the heads of families 
which formed the brotherhood. In the West also this rule 
of unanimity prevailed in ancient times in the settlement of 
public questions, and a survival of it in the present day may 
be seen in trial by jury. But the ties of blood, language, 
and worship, which conduce to unity of sentiment and action, 
become ineffective for that end when foreign ideals have been 
allowed to take root in the minds of the people. The intro- 
duction of strange principles in a homogeneous community 
leads to the suppression or modification of established modes 
of thought and the espousal of new opinions. In this conflict 
of thought it is impossible to determine questions affecting 
the welfare of the mixed people by the rule of unanimity, 
which is founded on love. A new rule was necessary for the 
adjustment of differences arising in a polity composed of 
heterogeneous masses and interests, and the rough and ready 
rule of majority, based on the force of members, was chosen. 
The two rules are different in kind. Unanimity involves 
mutual concession, but the majority in agreement means the 
rejection of the wishes of the minority. The former rule 
gives satisfaction all round and broadens love in the heart; 
but the latter quenches love and breeds resentment in the 
party defeated. To persons who prize the spiritual qualities 
of self-effacement, patience, and forbearance, the rule of 
majority is positively unholy, desecrating ; but it looks natural 
to those who are not spiritual-minded, and to those who have 
backslidden from spirituality to secularity. And what is meant 
by the secularisation of politics ? A polity which lives for 
this world only, and is ever in a hurry to wield power and 
secure for itself the perishable things of sensuous life by short 
cuts, esteeming it a virtue to be self-assertive, and to bawl, 
hustle, and smash in order to have its own way against the 
cherished desires and needs of others, is said to be " secularised," 



MISCARRIAGE OF LIFE IN THE WEST 15 

Political progress in the West means nothing more than 
the victories of majorities over minorities in parliament, diet, 
or senate. It does not mean a series of well-chosen measures 
for the development of righteousness and the expansion of 
love in the individual. Many of the triumphs of majorities 
have indeed abated or suppressed tyranny and other forms of 
abuse of political power, but who can tell how many blessings 
have been lost to the world by the defeat of minorities? It is 
usual to speak highly of the Reform Act of 1832, but for 
some years past it has been seen to be the means by which the 
government of the empire is passing into the hands of common 
labourers, and the cause of many a coming storm in the sea of 
socialism. Some fifty years earlier than the Reform Act 
happened the French Revolution, which secured for the masses 
what it called " political equality." The true meaning of this 
expression is little known. It denotes the idea that one 
human body is as good as another, that the body of a prime 
minister is no better than that of his coachman or footman. 
It ignores the deeper truth that minds in human bodies are 
really of different orders of intelligence and ability, and that 
therefore it is wrong, in the nature of things, to invest one 
order of minds with the work which is suitable only to another 
order. In a family it is the parents who must rule, because 
their minds see further and are less influenced by currents of 
selfishness or other disturbing factors than the minds of their 
children. Even so, in the government of a polity, it is the 
most enlightened and capable minds that should be entrusted 
with the power of directing its affairs. It is ruinous in the 
highest degree to invite the unlearned, the fickle, the impatient, 
and the irascible, who form the majority of the world, either 
to rule the country or to elect representatives for that purpose. 
Only those who are behind the scenes know the ingenious, 
costly, and difficult contrivances by which the evils and dangers 
of popular government are sought to be minimised or averted, 
by which the enfranchised populace are attempted to be 
" snared and taken " by a comparatively small body of men 



16 THE HIBBERT JOURNAL 

who are actuated by public spirit, or who believe themselves 
to be fit to guide the people and represent their interests in 
parliament. The work of teaching the people the nature of 
the public questions as they rise from time to time, and the 
work of carrying them safely to the poll, involve most anxious 
thought, strenuous labour, and heavy expenditure of money on 
the part of this small body of men, who employ thousands of 
agents to go among, and convert, the people. Thus arises the 
enthralling game of politics in the West. The aim of each 
player is to make his party take up his cry, and the aim of 
each party is to make the majority of the people take up that 
cry. When that is achieved, the ruling ministers who form 
the government are expected to give effect to the wishes of 
the majority by legislative enactment or executive order ; and 
if they do not, they should resign office and make room for 
another ministry. In this wise is maintained the never-ending 
political drama. It is exciting, and often amusing, and is 
commonly believed to be a struggle for the liberty of the 
people. 

"The great characteristic of modern politics," said Mr 
W. E. H. Lecky, " is the struggle for political liberty in its 
widest sense the desire to make the will of the people the 
basis of the government the conviction that a nation has a 
right to alter a government that opposes its sentiment." 
But surely the will of the people is not the will of a little 
more than half its number ; nor can the liberty of the majority, 
which involves the slavery of the minority, be justly called 
political liberty. It is this strange medley of freedom and 
bondage which stands proudly in the West for political 
progress. One of its worst features is that the middle and the 
cultured classes, who form the most sensible part of the 
nation, are without political power owing to their smallness in 
number. " They have as little power now," said Mr Walter 
Bagehot, " as they had before 1832 ; and the only difference is 
that before 1832 they were ruled by those richer than them- 
selves, and now they are ruled by those poorer." If they 



MISCARRIAGE OF LIFE IN THE WEST 17 

desire for legislative or municipal power, they must woo and 
win the populace in the way the latter like, and that way is 
the profane way that sickens the gentle and the righteous. 

It is not difficult now to see the true meaning of the 
saying that we are living in an age of progress. It simply 
means we are living in an age which, for want of proper judg- 
ment and poise, believes in change of any kind as a sure 
remedy for the tedium of work and idleness, and whose 
appetite is therefore keenly set on all those mechanical im- 
provements which have been invented from day to day for 
facilitating business or amusement. Such an age, having no 
adequate conception of the evils of luxury or of the greatness 
of work for its own sake, takes no pains to restrain the senses 
when they distract the mind, or to abate the play of the 
imagination as a means of conserving one's energy. It does 
not know the truth that sensuousness unfits the mind for its 
proper work of uplifting the soul. It claims to make us 
better to-day than we were yesterday, and to make us better 
to-morrow than we are to-day ; but that is only better in food, 
raiment, wealth, household furniture, equipage, social position, 
and rank, to be better in all that relates to the glorification 
of the perishable body, but not in anything that conduces to 
the purity of the eternal spirit. In this betterment of the 
body, the poor are striving hard to keep pace with the middle 
classes, the middle classes with the richer classes, the rich man 
with the millionaire, and the millionaire with the multi- 
millionaire. This feverish desire to earn more and spend more 
on the feeding and dressing of the body, and supplying it and 
the senses with every object of gratification, is robbing all 
classes of the people, from the highest to the lowest, of that 
peace of mind and poise which are essential to the safety of the 
body, as well as of the spirit. The nervous restlessness which 
characterises life in Western cities is not the mark of true 
progress or sound civilisation. This is felt to be so by the 
cultured few in those very cities, who are puzzled and amazed 

at the " up-to-date " craze, which is slowly but surely quench- 
VOL. VII. No. 1. 2 



18 THE HIBBERT JOURNAL 

ing the spirit, and so ruining the most valuable asset alike of 
the individual and the nation. 

It is folly to call this wide expansion of sensuousness and 
worldliness an Age of Progress. Sages declare that cities get 
filled with the rural population when love of finery and amuse- 
ment dominate the minds of the people. The flight of the 
peasantry from agricultural holdings into towns, known 
already to be too full of the unemployed and unemployable, is 
like the rush of insects into a bonfire lit in a tropical night, 
and affords positive proof that the spread of sensuous ideals is 
breaking up the very foundations of society. The steady back- 
sliding of every class into deeper depths of worldliness, irre- 
ligion, and frivolity, is utterly inconsistent with true progress 
or true civilisation, by which is meant the ideas and practices 
which consciously uplift a nation from the corruptions of 
sensuousness and unrighteousness to a higher plane of life, 
where reverence for the spirit and its careful extrication from 
the mazes of worldliness are the chief aims of human 

endeavour. 

P. RAMANATHAN. 

COLOMBO, CEYLON. 



A CHINESE STATESMAN'S VIEW 
OF RELIGION. 

CHARLES JOHNSTON, 

Late Bengal Civil Service. 

BY a piece of good fortune I was able, not long ago, to discuss 
many aspects of life and religion with his Excellency Kang 
Yu Wei. Let me try to indicate the position of this dis- 
tinguished man, who is one of the foremost living Orientals. 

Those who followed events in China during the critical 
period just before the "Boxer" outbreak of 1900 will 
remember that the young Emperor Kuang-su had adopted 
a very liberal programme, and had announced his wish to do 
for China what the Emperor Mutsuhito and the Elder States- 
men had done for Japan. The age-old system of Civil 
Service Examinations based on the Confucian Classics was 
to be abolished, to make way for modern methods. The 
countless loopholes for corruption, which made the Chinese 
government a system of bribery, were to be closed. Modern 
science was to take root at the very doors of the Forbidden 
City. A new Medical College was to oust the ancient Chinese 
quackery, with its charms and simples. And the Six Boards, 
the very stronghold of Chinese conservatism, were to be done 
away with, a modern Cabinet being created in their stead. 
Warm admiration for Japan was expressed, and it was even 
rumoured that the Emperor Kuang-su wished to invite Marquis 
Ito to Pekin, to advise him in the renovation of China. 

Then came a spectacular transformation. A new edict 

19 



20 THE HIBBERT JOURNAL 

announced that the Emperor Kuang-su, conscious of his youth 
and inexperience, had begged his titular mother, the Empress 
Dowager, to aid him with her wise counsel and long experi- 
ence. It was added, very significantly, that the recent decrees 
abolishing the Six Boards, the old Civil Service, and the tradi- 
tional system of quackery, and establishing fiscal reforms and a 
new Medical College, were withdrawn, and that China would 
henceforth continue in the ancient ways wherein she had walked 
so long, as the most civilised nation in the world. Immediately 
after this new edict, the power of the reactionaries, with Prince 
Tuan at their head, began to be felt increasingly ; the attitude 
towards " foreign devils " became more and more menacing, 
till the final explosion at Taku and Pekin, in the early summer 
of 1900. 

So much was visible from the front. Had we been able 
to go behind the scenes, to watch the secret springs of action 
in the Forbidden City, we should have seen the genius of the 
first transformation at work : a Cantonese by birth, a man of 
genius, who had rapidly attained the highest official positions 
in the state, and had finally gained the fullest confidence of 
the youthful Emperor Kuang-su. This Mentor, taking Japan 
as his text, convinced Kuang-su that there was no salvation 
for China in the old ostrich-like methods of obscurantism and 
seclusion ; that the Manchu bowmen could not withstand 
Maxim guns. He helped Kuang-su to see that only on 
modern principles of effectiveness, of real education and real 
work, could China hope to hold her own in the commonwealth 
of nations ; and that, if she really espoused these principles, 
and heartily applied them, she might one day become one of 
the greatest of nations. 

Under the wise guidance of this Cantonese Mentor, one 
reform after another was conceived and outlined, and the 
weak places in China's armour were laid bare. But such 
reforms as these had hosts of violent enemies, and the storm 
of opposition grew steadily blacker, until the Empress Dowager, 
Tszu-Hszi, the splendid and savage old woman who was well 



A CHINESE STATESMAN'S RELIGION 21 

nicknamed " the only man in China," came like the blind fury 
with the abhorred shears to slit the thin-spun life of the too 
venturesome Cantonese reformer. A sudden flight, an almost 
miraculous escape on a British warship, and Kang Yu Wei 
fled from China, with a price on his head. This is what might 
have been seen behind the scenes during that sudden and 
spectacular transformation. 

From the day of his flight, Kang Yu Wei has toiled 
unceasingly for the redemption of his motherland, travelling 
through many countries, building up reform organisations 
among the most influential Chinamen throughout the world ; 
instructing young men in his ideals ; everywhere the idol of 
young China; dauntless, cheerful-hearted, indefatigable, toil- 
ing day and night, yet maintaining always the detachment 
and aloofness of the true philosopher. Through all his 
wanderings, Kang Yu Wei has always kept in touch with 
the young Emperor Kuang-su ; and now that the long life 
of the Dowager Empress is visibly drawing to a close, the 
chance of his return, once more to direct the policy of his 
vast motherland, grows daily greater. Kang Yu Wei may be 
lifted in a day to the most influential position in the largest 
and oldest of the family of nations. His ideals, his beliefs, 
his prejudices even, may become determining factors in world 
politics. 

This is hardly the place to speak of the details of his 
policy, which Kang Yu Wei was good enough to explain at 
some length ; but perhaps I may be pardoned if I add a 
personal touch, as it well illustrates this gifted man's mood 
and temper. Kang Yu Wei is no wild-eyed revolutionary. 
On the contrary, he is moderate, urbane, gentle, full of humour, 
and deeply religious in inspiration. When so many Orientals 
have adopted Western dress, Kang Yu Wei is still a typical 
Chinaman. He wears the gold-laced jacket, and the high 
mandarin's cap with coral button ; a blue silk skirt and em- 
broidered Chinese slippers complete the portrait. There is 
something even more Oriental, in the best sense, in the 



22 THE HIBBERT JOURNAL 

mobility and refinement of his face, in the delicate vivacity of 
his hands, and in his courtly and sympathetic manners. 

After we had spoken of the regeneration of China, her 
need of an enlightened industrialism, of a modern fleet and 
army, the conversation turned to religion. Kang Yu Wei 
declared that he had the spiritual revival of China even more 
at heart than her political regeneration. He declared that he 
had always been a close student of religions ; that he had 
studied and translated the two thousand texts of Buddhism ; 
and that he found the great humane principles of religion in 
Buddhism and Christianity alike. He further told me that he 
always visited in the spirit of a pilgrim the centres or shrines 
of religious tradition ; that he had sought relics of Martin 
Luther at Eisenach ; and that, on a recent visit to Spain, he 
found in a monastery near Toledo much the same spirit of 
devout silence that had struck him in the lamaseries of Tibet. 

This brief talk suggested so many interesting problems, 
that I gladly took advantage of another opportunity to talk 
of religion with this Chinese man of genius, and some of the 
things which he said on that occasion I shall now try to 
record. 

I asked Kang Yu Wei, who has studied the Gospels pro- 
foundly, what seems to him the most striking quality in the 
character of Jesus. He answered, somewhat to my surprise, 
as we generally lay the emphasis elsewhere, that what appealed 
to him most, in the personality of Jesus, was his courage the 
manliness which could so quietly and dauntlessly face the 
hatred of so many of his fellow-countrymen, the fierce enmity 
of the powerful Pharisees, and, above all, the certainty of 
death, and of the outward failure of his mission ; the courage 
which undertook a work so constructive, the valour which 
could make, and could ask from others, such large sacrifices. 
The positive attitude of authority and power, maintained by 
one who was, outwardly, a homeless wanderer, seemed to Kang 
Yu Wei the dominant note in the character of Jesus. His 
courage stood first ; next to courage came his love. And 



A CHINESE STATESMAN'S RELIGION 23 

Kang Yu Wei had been deeply impressed by the fact that the 
love of Jesus, profound, abundant, and all-embracing as it was, 
was yet wholly free from weakness and sentimentalism ; could, 
indeed, be terribly stern on occasion, as when he scourged the 
money-changers from the Temple. 

The question of the miracles naturally came up. Kang 
Yu Wei declared that he believed that the accounts of them 
were true, and added that the East had always had the tradi- 
tion of miraculous power associated with great holiness. In 
his view, Jesus had used his spiritual powers to work what we 
call miracles, in order to fix the attention of his disciples and 
the multitudes on his spiritual message : " Believe me that I 
am in the Father, and the Father in me : or else believe me 
for the very works' sake." Kang Yu Wei made a comparison 
with the miracles attributed to Buddha, who, at the beginning 
of his mission, while talking to his disciples in a cave, produced 
the form of a serpent, which he then took in his hands, and 
caused to vanish. Miracles of healing, such as restoring sight 
to the blind, are also attributed to the Buddha. 

Further, Kang Yu Wei laid special stress on the way in 
which the teaching and personality of Jesus have woven them- 
selves into the fabric of Western history, as the most potent 
factor in the development of Christendom. He spoke especi- 
ally of the work of Clovis, and of the dramatic scene in the 
cathedral of Rheims, which in a certain sense was the birthday 
of modern Europe. He was also profoundly conscious of the 
part played by the Church in the culture of the Latin nations ; 
and we have already seen that he was an interested student of 
the life-work of Martin Luther. So that we may say that 
Kang Yu Wei recognised that a large part in the development 
of Western history, of the modern state with its ideas of civil 
rights, of individual liberty, of humanity, is to be attributed 
to the personality and teaching of Jesus, and this quite in- 
dependently of our view of his spiritual standing. Jesus is 
the greatest single factor in the development of the Western 
world. 



24 THE HIBBERT JOURNAL 

At this point in our talk, a situation arose which had a 
strong element of humour. As we had just discussed the 
historical and even the political aspects of the work of Jesus, 
it was natural that I should seek to learn Kang Yu Wei's 
views of its more spiritual sides. Therefore I asked him what 
he thought of the doctrine of the immortality of the soul. 
He looked at me rather keenly before replying ; and I think 
that, behind the urbane and courteous countenance of the 
statesman, there was something of the reticence of the Oriental, 
when confronted by the pushing, inquiring, and very often 
sneering " foreign devil." The good gentleman did not wish 
to have his shrines rashly invaded. 

My impression that his thought was running in some such 
channel was strengthened by his question : " What do you 
yourself think about the soul's immortality ? " 

I was able to reply that I held immortality to be the great 
and illuminating central truth in life ; that which gave meaning 
and power to all the rest. And one detected something like 
a delicate expression of relief and satisfaction pass over the 
mobile, gifted, strong face of the Chinese statesman. 

Thereupon he began to unfold to me his own view, putting 
his conclusions rather in the form of question and speculation ; 
yet one could see that he held quite clearly and firmly to these 
lightly indicated ideas. If I mistake not, Kang Yu Wei, 
while believing firmly in the immortality of the soul, does not 
believe that all men are equally immortal ; that all men have 
only to pass through physical death, in order to enter the 
ranks of the immortals. He believes rather, I convinced 
myself, that immortality is something to be attained, some- 
thing to be won, and something which, in the full sense, all 
men cannot be said to win. He spoke of strong souls and 
weak souls ; of souls made strong by courage and sacrifice, 
by daring and unselfish work for others ; souls that soar on 
wings of high attainment into the clearer air of spiritual 
being ; of such souls as these, he believes that conscious im- 
mortal life after death is the reward. On the other hand, 



A CHINESE STATESMAN'S RELIGION 25 

there are weak, cowardly, indifferent souls, who are to be 
thought of as rather prone upon the earth ; and the full 
measure of immortality is not for these. 

I was struck by the curious resemblance of this belief to 
that expressed by Goethe, who also held that not all souls are 
equally immortal ; that full immortality is the prize and crown 
of heroic endeavour, of noble virtue, of undaunted self-sacrifice ; 
that the spiritual body must grow, so to speak, to the full 
immortal stature. After all, does not St Paul suggest the 
same idea, in the famous fifteenth chapter of the First Epistle 
to the Corinthians ? " It is sown in weakness, it is raised in 
strength ; it is sown in corruption, it is raised in incorruption ; 
it is sown a physical body, it is raised a spiritual body." 

This resemblance to the view of Goethe suggested another 
question. Goethe believed in immortality, not only in the 
future, but in the past, and declared that not only did he hope 
to live again, and live many times, but that he believed he had 
lived many times in the past ; and that his strong sympathy 
for certain periods of imperial Rome was a half-conscious 
reminiscence carried over from a former life. In the same 
way, Goethe suggested that intuitive sympathy and love for 
certain people may be carried over from another life, may be the 
picking up of threads spun long before. 

Therefore I asked Kang Yu Wei whether he also believed 
in previous existence, and in the possibility of a memory of 
former times, so that we come " not in entire forgetfulness." 
Once more there was the quick glance of inquiry, lest the 
foreigner might heedlessly step on consecrated ground. But 
this time the reassurance was instant. Yes, Kang Yu Wei did 
believe that the soul must in some sense be immortal in the 
past as in the future ; that we must struggle toward the goal 
of fully conscious immortality through a long series of experi- 
ences, in which battle after battle must be waged, victory after 
victory painfully won. As to memory of past experiences and 
former lives, Kang Yu Wei seemed to associate it with the 
growth of the soul. Strong, valiant souls, which have grown 



26 THE HIBBERT JOURNAL 

to full stature and " attained," may, in his view, gain also a full 
memory of the past ; and there must be all degrees, through 
partial and shadowy reminiscence, down to complete forgetful- 
ness and mere oblivion. 

So much as to the chief matters of speculation. We spoke 
also more particularly of China and her religious life. As a 
high official who had gained the Chinese degrees, it need 
not be said that Kang Yu Wei was thoroughly familiar 
with the texts of Confucianism. His knowledge, indeed, has 
grown to warm enthusiasm, and he insists that the existence 
of God and the immortality of the soul are cardinal doctrines 
of the Confucian system. I was greatly surprised to find that 
his dislike for Lao-Tze and the Tao Teh King seems as marked 
as his love and admiration for Confucius. He insists that the 
Taoist texts are either mistranslated or not yet translated at 
all, and that the Western view of this teacher is quite erroneous. 
Lao-Tze, he said, was an obscurantist, who taught that the 
people should be kept in ignorance, in order that they might 
be the more easily governed. I fancied that he almost identi- 
fied Lao-Tze with certain reactionary forces at Pekin in our 
own day. 

These, in brief, are the views which I was so fortunate as 
to be able to glean from the Chinese statesman who may yet 
be destined to play a leading part on the world's stage. I 
think they are as reassuring as is his personality ; and I can 
well believe him when he says that he would willingly renounce 
the stormy and perilous life of a reformer for the quiet paths 
of religion and philosophy, were it not that he feels drawn to 
the more arduous task by a strong sense of duty and moral 
obligation. There is much of sacrifice in his life. Let us 
hope that the future may bring him the reward he covets, of 
successful achievement for others. 

CHARLES JOHNSTON. 

NEW YORK. 



THE MOSLEM TRADITION OF JESUS' 
SECOND VISIT ON EARTH. 

CAPTAIN F. W. VON HERBERT. 

WHEN, as a youngster of seventeen, I was in the Turkish 
service, I loved to have theological discussions with brother- 
officers of my age, like me fresh from school. In the course of 
these the remark was often hurled at me : " When your Jesus 
comes again " such and such a thing will happen ; so often, 
by such widely different men, with such assertiveness and force 
of conviction, as gave me seriously to think thus : These 
fellows are not drawing on their imagination, are not quoting 
arguments of their own, but are referring to something that 
exists already in their creed, or their literature, or their text- 
books, or their traditions. Later in the campaign (1877) I 
heard, round the camp-fire, the habitual story-teller of a com- 
pany of infantry relate his version of the Second Coming of 
Issa, and I then learnt that many versions of the same story 
were afloat amongst Moslems of all countries. This version, 
by the way, was grotesque and obscene, and is unfit for 
publication in Christian countries. Its Issa was a feeble- 
minded fool, who, after having tried all other lands, returns to 
Turkey as the only soil congenial to him, the only place where 
idiots are still held in superstitious veneration, instead of being 
locked up in asylums. 

Since then I have travelled repeatedly and extensively in 
Turkey, both European and Asiatic. Speaking Turkish, I 
have made it my business to make friends of Turks of all 
classes. I have paid special attention to public story-tellers, a 

27 



28 THE HIBBERT JOURNAL 

class fast dying out. In particular, I have inquired carefully 
into the Issa legends. This is the result of my inquiries : 

The Turks owe the legend to the Seljuks, as they owe to 
them many other things for instance, names, nursery-rhymes, 
fables, bogeys and other superstitions, lullabies and cradle- 
songs, fairy tales, not to mention matters pertaining to archi- 
tecture, public worship, ceremonial, and government. The idea 
that Jesus will at some future time revisit this earth, and will 
select Turkey as the place of His abode, after having tried in 
vain all those countries whose inhabitants profess His name, 
dates thus from the thirteenth century. But up to the middle 
of the nineteenth century this was only an idea, at the most a 
short fable ; it became a tale or legend when railways were 
first built in Western countries. Presumably the notion of 
Jesus encountering one of those rushing monsters, unknown 
to Him, gave professional story-tellers, up to two decades ago 
the only carriers of Turkish folklore, a splendid motif for a new 
and striking tale, and they hung it on to the peg of the already 
existing Issa fable. This was the birth of the modern legend 
of the Second Coming of Issa. Be it specially noted that the 
legend was in existence some forty years before European 
and American writers used an imaginary revisit of Jesus 
as a theme for sensational books. As I said before, I 
heard a complete and lengthy version in 1877. Thus the 
Turks have not been influenced in the general idea of the 
legend by Christian writers. 

There are many versions of this legend probably some 
hundreds. They have the idea in common that Jesus chooses 
Turkey, as the only country which He recognises, after having 
turned in horror or disgust from every Christian country. 
Naturally, they vary much in detail, for the details are left to 
the knowledge of Western countries and customs possessed by 
the narrator, be he story-teller, priest, teacher, or ordinary 
village-gossip. Thus, in 1907, I heard of a version in which 
European ladies still wore crinolines, and the time of action 
was supposed to be that same year! The reason of this 



THE SECOND COMING OF ISSA 29 

anachronism was simply that the narrator, unable to read 
Latin characters and figures, had come across a French illus- 
trated book of the year 1860. Again, in another, also recent, 
version Occidentals are presumed to be unacquainted with 
tobacco, simply because they are unacquainted with the 
narghile ! 

But the most vital difference is exhibited in the character 
of Issa. Sometimes, as in the version here given, Issa is the 
Jesus of the Bible simple, trusting, childlike, loving all men, 
ever ready to forgive, yet stern and uncompromising at rare 
moments, when faith or principle is involved ; above all, He is 
the friend of the poor and oppressed. In parenthesis : in the 
version here given, an absurd, though not irreverent, love- 
episode is omitted. In other versions Issa is militant, aggres- 
sive, always making enemies. In yet others He is, as already 
mentioned, a good-natured imbecile. In yet others He is a 
supernatural Being pure and simple, without human attri- 
butes, a glorified " Jin " of old. In yet others He is simply 
the saint and minor prophet of Moslem theology. 

I acquired the version here given in the following wise : 
A public story-teller told it in a small cafe' on the outskirts of 
Smyrna during Ramazan (October) 1906, I being present. 
Present was also a priest, whose acquaintance I subsequently 
made, a week or two later. He was a well-informed man, had 
once travelled in Roumania and Austria, had read European 
history, and was a voracious reader of Greek and Turkish 
newspapers. He repeated the story to me, and, so far as I 
could remember, it differed from that of the public reciter only 
in unimportant details. He knew the story well, had heard it 
many times, and I begged him to reproduce the reciter's own 
words as much as possible. This he promised to do, but I 
cannot help thinking that he introduced a few details of his 
own knowledge of Western life and manners, of which know- 
ledge he was very proud. A fortnight later I made, from 
memory, a rough translation, which I revised and copied six 
months afterwards. 



30 THE HIBBERT JOURNAL 

With one exception, I have never seen any version of the 
Issa legend in print or manuscript, nor have I heard of any. 
The exception is this : During my last visit to Turkey I bought 
a large number (eighty or more) of Turkish school-books, first 
readers and the like. In one of them appeared a brief version, 
less than a small page in length, of Issa's second coming and 
choice of Turkey. It was very bald and rather childish. Un- 
fortunately, I did not keep a list of the titles, etc., of those 
books. On my journey home my steamer ran on the rocks, 
during a fog, on the coast of Asia Minor, and in the turmoil 
of salvage part of my luggage, including my box of books, 
was lost or stolen. I have since re-bought a large number of 
Turkish school-books ; but this particular book I have not yet 
found again. 

To conclude: The Takhtajis, a tribe which inhabits the 
peninsula which forms the northern horn of the Bay of 
Smyrna, are generally held to be descendants of the Seljuks. 
They have a curious annual festival, from which strangers (even 
Moslems) are jealously excluded. I have never met anyone 
who had succeeded in being present, though many, including 
myself, have tried ; but it is a common belief among Moslems 
that an allegorical representation of Issa's Second Coming forms 
part of the ceremonial. This is too striking to be a mere 
coincidence. In parenthesis : so secretive is this tribe that 
my patient inquiries have not even elicited their true name, 
for the appellation Takhtajis, meaning Woodcutters, is that 
given to them by the Turks, by reason of their occupation. 
It is probably here that some future inquirer will find reliable 
data as to the origin of the Turkish Issa legend. 

THE LEGEND. 

Nearly two thousand years have passed since Issa on 
whom be peace ! wandered in the richest province of our 
mighty empire and preached peace on earth, goodwill to men, 
concord among nations, practising all that he taught in his 
own person and his own life, and thus preparing the way for a 



THE SECOND COMING OF ISSA 31 

greater who came, six centuries after him, to finish and to 
crown the sublime edifice of a universal faith : when he be- 
thought himself to visit once again this fair earth, for whose 
inhabitants he had laid down his life and sealed his life's work 

with his blood. 

I. 

Issa, in the garb of a labouring man, walked along a main 
road which led into a flourishing city of the German empire. 
The road was deserted ; there were no wayfarers in sight. 
And at this Issa was much astonished ; for in his time roads 
leading into cities were crowded on sunny mornings with men 
whom their vocations took to town from the villages, and with 
those who, having already terminated their business in the 
markets, returned to their peaceful homesteads. Mules, asses, 
horses, camels, carrying burdens to and fro, carts, poor men 
with loads on their backs, used to throng the roads which 
Cgesar's soldiers and hirelings had made. But here was soli- 
tude, though over the horizon hung a heavy black cloud, 
betokening many houses in which, no doubt, countless women 
prepared the midday meal against their masters' return from 
field or workshop. 

Issa walked on towards the city, not comprehending. For 
he was mortal man again for a little while, with man's limited 
understanding. 

He that had come after Issa, God's own Prophet, had 
counselled him to walk on earth in the shape and the garb of a 
rich and mighty person, for the Prophet knew that a portion of 
humanity had declined to receive his teaching, and was in the 
coils of unbelief and cruelty and spiritual darkness, and in the 
habit of worshipping those who owned many lands and worldly 
goods. But Issa, simple and childlike as of yore, with his 
sublime belief in the inherent goodness of the human race, 
had made reply and said : " I was despised and rejected, 
sorrowful and acquainted with grief; I was a homeless 
wanderer ; the poor were my friends and little children my 
comfort ; and my message was for the humble and the heavy- 



32 THE HIBBERT JOURNAL 

laden. I shall not give the lie to my teaching and my life ; I 
shall not turn my back on the equals and successors of those 
who once befriended me." And thus Issa was again an out- 
cast among men, lonely as that awful forsakenness in which he 
had prayed in the garden of El Kuds for deliverance from the 
coming hour of terror and torment and infamous death. 

Suddenly Issa heard behind him a great noise, a noise of 
horror and devilry, as of thunder and metal, and rushing whirl- 
wind, and a thousand clanking chains, with the voice of a 
shrieking fiend above the infernal din. 

He turned round and beheld, on a raised path running 
parallel to the road a hideous path of geometrical exactness, 
curiously beset with tall, cord-connected poles a succession 
of iron chariots of ugly shape and colour ; in front of the long 
clanging line, a shrieking, fire-spitting, smoke-vomiting black 
monster. And this devilish procession was rushing towards 
the city with a speed compared to which the speed of the 
swiftest Roman war-chariot was but as a snail's pace. The 
earth shook, the sweet morning air was poisoned, the sun was 
obscured by the black monster's infamous exhalations, and 
flocks of birds were startled from the meadows and flew away 
in dismay. The cars had regular openings in their sides, and 
through these Issa beheld in a lightning glance, as this devil's 
contrivance thundered by, crowds of human beings in hideous 
attire. 

The thing was gone in the twinkling of an eye, contracting 
its shape until it became a mere black speck in the fair land- 
scape. The birds returned to their worms, and God's wind 
dispersed the smoke and the stench. But earth was not 
the same to Issa ; it seemed to him that a foul disease had 
left on it a vile and poisonous sore. And then Issa, looking 
round to refresh himself by the sights and sounds and scents 
of nature, noticed that the fields were uncultivated and pro- 
duced apparently nothing but rank grass, to consume which 
there seemed to be no cattle or beasts of burden only three 
or four miscoloured sheep. 



THE SECOND COMING OF ISSA 33 

But God, taking compassion upon His beloved saint's 
perplexity, sent him one of the angels whose painful duty it 
is to record the doings of unbelievers. And the angel 
whispered into Issa's ear : 

" This is the manner in which these men convey them- 
selves from place to place an invention of the devil. This is 
why the highroads are deserted. This is why men congregate 
in huge, ugly cities. This is why fruitful fields are unculti- 
vated, fair gardens unweeded, pretty villages forsaken. This 
is why unbelievers have to obtain their daily sustenance from 
far countries, over seas which in thy time were deemed 
endless countries where there are still men, simple and 
grateful, who gather the kindly fruits of the earth." 

Sadly Issa walked on and came to the city. He was 
hungry and thirsty and tired, and he bethought himself to 
enter a labourer's cottage and salute the master and claim the 
wanderer's privilege a morsel of bread, a drink of spring- 
water, a basin wherein to wash his aching feet. But in vain 
was he looking for a humble house in the door of which should 
stand a man with a kindly countenance. For all the buildings 
were tall and big and grim, like prisons, and all the people 
seemed to be in a hurry and had anxious faces, many cruel 
and sinister, many callous, many careworn and sad. Not one 
happy countenance was to be seen even the children sped 
along the streets as if driven with whips, carrying heavy 
satchels, and appearing to be intent on some pressing and 
serious business. 

Issa walked on, and presently he came to a vast space, 
surrounded by gorgeous edifices. A multitude had assembled 
therein, mostly men in garments like his own, and they 
appeared to be listening to an orator who stood on the steps 
leading to the statue of some ill-shapen god or hero. 

The orator thundered forth with a great voice and waved 
his arms, and sweat was on his brow ; and the multitude 
swayed to and fro, and presently it shouted frantically. And 

then, lo ! many men with swords, some afoot, some on prancing 
VOL. VII. No. 1. 3 



34 THE H1BBERT JOURNAL 

horses, all garbed alike in sombre blue and wearing ugly hats 
with spikes, appeared from the neighbouring streets, where 
they had lain in ambush, drew their swords and made a fierce 
attack upon the multitude, which seemed to carry no arms. 
And in the unequal combat the multitude was beaten back 
and left many behind prostrate, over whose bodies the horse- 
men rode with joyful faces and shouts of glee and triumph ; 
and the armed men afoot pursued the vanquished ones, even 
up the stairs leading to houses, and into the doors, and down 
the steps into dark cellars, and they hacked at them with their 
swords, and gloried when they had cut down a woman or a 
child, or some aged and defenceless person. 

Issa fled from the terrible sight, and when he came to a 
quieter street he lifted up his countenance and prayed for 
enlightenment. And immediately the angel was by his side 
and said : 

" The men who listened to the orator are workmen toiling 
in hellish dens full of inventions of the devil for wages which 
will not buy a sufficiency of bread for their children, so that 
a few rich might become yet richer. The orator is one of the 
leaders of the labouring men, and he exhorted them to be brave 
and strong and united. The soldiers are the guardians of the 
city, who are bribed by the rich ones to cut down and mutilate 
and imprison all such as desire to ameliorate their sad existence. 
And, most wonderful thing of all, the teaching of that orator 
is thine when thou didst walk the earth : the equality of all 
before God, community of goods, mutual help, charity, and 
the claim of everyone that worketh to daily bread, shelter, and 
a peaceful life for himself and his children." 

Issa covered his face with his hands and prayed. And when 
light and comfort had come to him from on high he spoke : 

" This is not the country which I would fain choose for my 
second Advent. Here I know scarce the earth and the human 
race again." 

And while he yet spoke soldiers with swords appeared at 
the end of the street and rushed towards him to seize and slay 



THE SECOND COMING OF ISSA 35 

him, for to them he was but one of a multitude to be beaten 
and tormented and cast into prison. 

But the angel took Issa's hand, and when the men with 
swords came to the spot where he had stood they found no- 
body. And after they had marvelled greatly, they proceeded 
to seek other unarmed victims ; for they were mighty heroes, 
and greatly daring whenever they encountered those who 
could not defend themselves. 

II. 

Issa stood in a dirty, poverty-stricken village of the empire 
of the Russians. In the open doors of the hovels crouched 
shapes which he failed to recognise at first as human beings : 
grimy skeletons, ragged and half naked, their faces pain-drawn, 
their eyes lustreless, their long hair unkempt. The bony hands 
were folded, and the thin lips muttered prayers to an idolatrous 
god who did not and could not hear. 

There was a famine in the land there is nearly always a 
famine in that land and Issa, with his infinite compassion for 
human suffering, was anxious to help those who could not 
help themselves, in whose torture and starvation the "rich and 
mighty ones of the country gloried. 

Issa assumed the garb of a man from the neighbouring 
market-town, and when the people beheld him they crawled 
towards him they were too weak to walk upright and knelt 
before him and cried for bread. So Issa lifted his eyes to 
heaven and prayed for power to help the starving ones, and 
God and His Prophet heard him. And when full assurance 
had come to him he said : 

" Go ye to yonder barn and ye will find wherewith to feed 
yourselves and your little ones." 

So the people went, as best they could, and found loaves 
and wheaten cakes, fruit and flour, eggs and meat, jars of milk 
and skins of clear water, enough for the whole village and to 
spare for the morrow and the day after, and they ate and 
were filled. 



36 THE HIBBERT JOURNAL 

But when they had rested and regained strength a little, 
they came back to Issa, angry and menacing, and with one 
accord they demanded that he should give them firewater. 

Issa comprehended not ; but the angel was at his side and 
whispered : 

" Firewater is an invention of the devil, which these people 
drink, which benumbeth their senses, maketh them mad, and 
causeth them to do vile deeds." 

So Issa made answer to them and said : 

" What would ye do with this firewater ? For if ye drink 
it, the devil will enter into your bodies." 

The people cried : 

" We want to have courage to burn the palace in which 
liveth the lord of this land, and to slay him, his wife and his 
children, his guests and his servants." 

Issa answered : 

" Taught I not your fathers that ye should forgive your 
enemies, pray for them who trespass against you, and do good 
to those who have done you evil ? Why, therefore, do ye 
desire this wicked thing ? " 

The people answered him not, but shouted with a great 
voice : 

" Slay him ! Slay him ! " 

The angel seized Issa's hand, and when the people found 
him not they were sore afraid. 

So Issa came to the town, and in the main street, which 
was forsaken by all but vile-looking men on horseback, ape-like 
in appearance, clad in garments of dark green, with swords 
and lances, he found many bodies of slain men, women, 
and children. Some were still moving, groaning or crying 
feebly for help which came not ; the most part were dead, and 
terror-stricken eyes, from which light had departed, gazed up 
to a pitiless heaven. Some were horribly mangled, and not a 
few of the dead women clasped dead babies in their arms. 
Old men there were among the slain and youths in the vigour 
of years ; aged hags and handsome girls ; blood was every- 



THE SECOND COMING OF ISSA 37 

where pools on the pavement, splashes on the walls, and the 
gutters were pink. The horsemen chattered like monkeys to 
each other, and gnashed their teeth and rejoiced greatly at the 
sight of so many victims. The windows of the houses were 
closed with boards and the doors were tightly shut, and, but 
for the horsemen, this was truly a city of the dead. 

The angel spoke : 

" The slain are Jews, thy countrymen, and the slayers are 
those who profess to have adopted thy teaching and call 
themselves by thy name. I say no more." 

Issa made answer and said : 

"It is written : * My thoughts are not thy thoughts and 
My ways are not thy ways.' Woe unto this country which 
hath profaned my name, and hath made of it an instrument of 
hatred and murder towards my brethren ! But there must be 
fair realms still on this once so fair earth. Let me seek them, 
so that 1 may hasten my Advent." 

III. 

So Issa came to France. He stood in a beautiful old 
town, before a glorious edifice, the like of which there are 
but few in the world. Many centuries ago men had worked 
at it from youth to old age, and their children and children's 
children had laboured to complete it, spending their lives, 
their money, their knowledge, and their craft to make it a 
house worthy of the Lord of Hosts who was to dwell therein. 
But the door was closed, and soldiers guarded it with deadly 
weapons. 

A white-haired man in a long black robe and some young 
women who carried flowers approached the building, intent 
on entering and worshipping God in His own house ; but the 
soldiers pushed them back with rude words, and they went 
away weeping. 

The angel said to Issa : 

"The governors of this country and the priests have 
quarrelled ; it would seem that each desireth the money of 



38 THE HIBBERT JOURNAL 

the others. So the governors have sent for the soldiers, 
who prevent the people from entering into the temples and 
worshipping God therein." 

Sadly Issa walked away and came to a great space where 
many men arid women were assembled buying and selling ; 
for it was a market-town, and this was the weekly market-day. 
Oxen and cows were there to be sold, fowl and fish, fruit and 
vegetables ; and in many other commodities much barter was 
done. There were also tents in which buffoons amused the 
people, making them to laugh and to spend much money ; 
and in other tents wild beasts, starved and sick, were kept, 
so that people might tease them with sticks, and cause them 
to roar with rage and pain. 

Issa entered one of these tents and beheld a multitude 
listening to a loud and raucous and nasal voice, which was 
singing a song full of mirth-provoking indecencies, whereat 
the people were greatly edified. Issa marvelled, for he could 
not perceive the singer, until at length it became clear to 
him that the voice proceeded from an instrument shaped like 
a great clarion, which stood on a raised platform at the end 
of the tent. 

" Behold yet another invention of the devil ! " said the 
angel. " The voice of a man, singing coarse, obscene, and 
hideous songs, is condensed and preserved in this infernal 
contrivance, and can be let loose at will." 

" I recall full well," replied Issa, sadly, " the stern and 
virile ballads of the Arab wanderers in the desert, when they 
crouched around the camp fire, after the day's hunting and 
travelling and fighting were done. And I remember the 
joyous songs of Syrian maidens at vintage or harvest, gay 
as the paean of the skylark, and melodious as the rustling 
of God's wind in the forest trees or the surging of the waves 
on the borders of the tideless sea, and their plaintive ditties 
when they sat spinning in the long dark winter evenings. So 
this is what men call song nowadays? Let us leave them. 
I would fain rest among people who can still speak of their 



THE SECOND COMING OF ISSA 39 

joys, hopes, and sorrows in the language of song, and who 
can listen spellbound when one, a master of the craft, poureth 
out his very heart before them, and attuneth them to his 
innermost thoughts and feelings, so that they rejoice with 
him at his gladness, and weep with him at his grief, and are 
better men and women for having so listened and so felt." 
And Issa departed thence. 

IV. 

Issa came to the beautiful realm of England, and stood on 
a road which led, through many lovely scenes, to the mightiest 
town of that empire the mightiest town, too, of the whole 
world. 

A fairer earthly spot had he not beheld since the days of 
his toilsome pilgrimage in our beloved Syria. Here were 
wooded hills and fertile valleys, silvery streams in which fishes 
leapt with joy, mysterious thickets in which the nightingale 
sang divinely, rich meadows studded with sturdy cattle and fat 
sheep, and O marvel ! not a few golden cornfields. And 
cottages were there, quaint, thatched, half-hidden in luxurious 
foliage, wherein dwelt men and women, poor, content, and no 
doubt kindly and hospitable. It was evening ; the west was 
lighted up in crimson and orange, and pale, pellucid green 
clouds had a margin of fire, and a russet light fell over hill 
and dale like molten gold, the last rich gift of the dying day. 

A stranger in a strange land, having not a place where to 
lay his head, and possessing none of that accursed thing called 
money with which as he had learnt by now you can buy 
anything among unbelievers, from a loaf to a man's honesty, 
from a shoe to a woman's virtue, from a house to a human 
soul, Issa proposed to knock at the door of a cottage and 
crave for a humble evening meal and a bundle of straw, to start 
with the rising sun on his search, leaving the sweet fragrance 
of his blessing behind in the house which had given him 
shelter. 

So he walked on for a little space until he came to a tiny 



40 THE H1BBERT JOURNAL 

cottage abutting on the road, the walls of which were almost 
covered with roses and creeping plants. Adjoining the cottage 
were great iron gates, craftily wrought, swinging between 
stone pillars crowned with images of winged monsters. Through 
the bars of the gates Issa beheld a straight broad road covered 
with yellow gravel and bordered with gorgeous flower-beds, 
and in the distance, at the end of the yellow road, a castle with 
towers. 

So Issa, who wore the garments of a wayfarer, knocked at 
the door of the cottage. A burly man opened, and Issa, 
having saluted the house and its master, humbly preferred his 
request, and proceeded to take off his dusty shoes before 
entering. But the man spoke roughly, and called Issa a thief, 
and a liar, and a vagabond, and, having sent for a soldier-man 
with a stick, had him cast into prison. 

Issa knew not what crime he had committed ; for in his 
time every wanderer, be he never so lonely and humble, was 
entitled to expect at any house that he might encounter on his 
weary journey a kindly greeting, a meal, the wherewithal to 
wash his feet, a night's shelter, and a cup of milk and a 
cheerful godspeed on starting. But in the night, when Issa 
was praying in his darksome dungeon, the angel came to 
him and explained that among unbelievers, more particularly 
in this country, England, the asking for bread or shelter without 
tendering money was considered a dreadful crime, deserving of 
long and severe punishment. 

" But the strangest thing of all," said the angel, " is that 
it is equally considered a crime, meriting cruel punishment, for 
a man possessing no money to sleep among the hedges, or 
under trees, or at the roadside, or on doorsteps." 

Issa spoke : 

" It is written : * He giveth His beloved sleep.' It is God's 
will that men should sleep. What is a man to do, who, hav- 
ing no money and being tired and worn, desireth to forget his 
sorrows in the slumber which God ordained to be the home of 
the homeless and the solace of the afflicted ? " 



THE SECOND COMING OF ISSA 41 

" He must wander on until he drops down dead, or he must 
sleep in prison, among thieves and murderers," replied the 
angel, grimly. " But let us depart hence, for if thou stayest, 
thou wilt be brought on the morrow before the judge who 
liveth in the castle. And the man of whom thou askedst 
bread is the servant of the judge, and the judge will surely 
punish thee threefold, because thou hast committed a crime 
against his hireling, whose duty it is to guard the iron gates." 

So Issa and the angel departed, and on the morrow they 
came to the great and rich city. 

Never had Issa beheld such splendour. The booths of the 
craftsmen, the silk-mercers, the purple-dyers, the fruit- vendors, 
the sellers of gold and silver ware, the money-changers, the 
slave-traders, were more splendid than the palaces of the 
mightiest in his time. Chariots with prancing horses, rolling 
on to a fair garden ; warriors in garb of crimson and gold ; 
beautiful women, bestowing kindly smiles even on wayfarers 
unknown to them, passed him in a whirling procession of such 
magnificence as might have entered the boldest dreams of King 
Solomon, on whom be peace ! But the fair scene was contami- 
nated by an evil screeching iron monster which rushed through 
the streets at lightning speed, at whose approach people fled 
in dismay, taking shelter in doorways, and covering their faces 
terror-stricken. Seated on this monster were two demons with 
vile faces, who grinned at the multitude whom their approach 
had affrighted, and who ever and anon made a hideous noise, 
like the howl of anguish of some animal in pain. 

Issa said to the faithful angel who stood beside him : 

" I would fain see other parts of this city, the quarter of the 
poor and humble ; for here I see but the rich." 

The angel seized his hand, and together they came to a vast 
hall, and with many others entered a chamber therein. And 
the chamber moved down, down into the bowels of the earth. 
When it had stopped they were in a long, ugly passage, and 
rushing into this passage came just such a procession of cars, 
drawn by a vile monster, as Issa had beheld in Germany. The 



42 THE HIBBERT JOURNAL 

cars were crowded with men and women, and scarce Issa found 
a place therein. Then the hellish procession rushed on into 
the darkness of earth's interior, with the speed of the light- 
ning and the noise of a thousand demons let loose. It stopped 
many times, and men came and went ; and when at last it had 
arrived at its destination, Issa and the angel entered another 
chamber, which moved upwards till they came to daylight 
again. 

Issa said : 

" I know not this earth, into the bowels of which you must 
descend if you desire to go from place to place. I know not 
this race, which despiseth the limbs given to it by God, and 
hath to employ devilish contrivances for the simple act of 
proceeding on a brief journey." 

And he shook the dust of that country from off his feet. 

V. 

Issa came to America, and stood in a great city thereof. 
Never had he beheld or imagined anything so hideous. The 
houses huge, square, forbidding, and indescribably ugly- 
reached into the heavens ; they were higher than the highest 
towers of castles and palaces in his time. They shut out the 
sunlight and the fresh air eternally ; the street was damp and 
chilly and gloomy, as if at the bottom of a well. Overhead 
were meshes and networks of cords, so that the birds could not 
descend to be fed. Through the street rushed great cars in an 
endless procession, propelled by an unseen power. The people 
hurried along in a never-ending stream, each man and woman 
alone, never two or three in cheerful conversation, each face 
anxious and flurried and sinister, as if bent on some sinful 
errand. The ceaseless din of the rushing cars, and the patter- 
ing of countless feet on the hard, cruel stone pavement, the 
coarse shouting of vile-looking urchins, who appeared to 
hawk rags on which were inscribed black characters all 
these seemed to Issa as the tumult and the devilry of a 
great battle. 



THE SECOND COMING OF ISSA 43 

The angel pointed to a vast edifice, even uglier and higher 
than its neighbours. 

" Here dwelleth a company of men," said he, " each richer 
by far than Solomon (on whom be peace !), whose vocation 
it is to render the commodities which men require for bare 
life, such as corn for bread, or oil for lamps, so dear that the 
people must die or become beggars or outcasts." 

" And why do not the governors cast such evildoers into 
the innermost prison ? " asked Issa. 

The angel made answer and said : 

" Because people have set up to themselves a god whose 
name is money, whom they worship in abject fear, against 
whose high-priests they dare not lift a finger." 

" Let us depart," said Issa. " Show thou to me one other 
spot in this country before I leave a nation whom God hath 
forsaken, because it hath forsaken God and made to itself a 
molten and graven image to worship." 

So Issa came to an open place in that country, with corn- 
fields and meadows and cattle, and a soft, warm air. A great 
multitude was assembled on a spot beyond a fair town, and in 
their midst was an Ethiopian, bound to a stake. Around the 
stake were piled up faggots of dry wood. And the people set 
fire to the faggots, and the Ethiopian was burned alive for 
their edification, dying amidst frightful agonies, whereat the 
people made a cheerful noise. And soldiers came from the 
town, carrying curious weapons. But the people had similar 
weapons, which, before the soldiers had come near enough for 
battle, they used against them. These weapons spit fire amid 
much deafening noise, and some soldiers fell down dead or 
wounded, whereupon the people fled. 

" The Ethiopian was suspected of having committed a 
crime," explained the angel. " But being black of skin, the 
people (who call themselves by thy name, O Issa ! ) took him 
away from prison, where the judge was to judge him according 
to law, and burnt him before his guilt had been proved, and 
before an opportunity had been given to him to make a defence. 



44 THE HIBBERT JOURNAL 

The soldiers were sent to rescue the poor captive and take 
him back to prison, so that justice might be done in due order 
and with impartiality ; but they came too late, and the people, 
incensed at being disturbed in their amusement, used their 
firearms another invention of the devil which, enabling a 
man to slay his adversary without being near him, has stifled 
courage and prowess and manly intrepidity, the virtues of the 
race in thy time. Some of the soldiers fell down grievously 
hurt. But the multitude, being cowards, ran away." 

Issa said : " This is not the mankind whom I came to save. 
They know me not, although they hypocrites, vipers, and 
blasphemers ! call upon my name ; and I shall know them 
not on the last day, but shall pray God to cast them into outer 
darkness." 

And he departed thence. 

VI. 

Many other countries did Issa visit. In South Africa he 
found the English nation exterminating with hellish con- 
trivances a tribe of kindly husbandmen who had been living 
contentedly and peacefully on the soil which they had 
conquered from the heathen, so that the English might dig 
into the ground and carry away gold and precious stones 
therefrom. In Asia he found the Russian nation making 
dreadful war upon a strange people that had desired to 
ameliorate its lot and to extend its commerce. And many 
more devil's inventions did he see : instruments by which the 
human voice was carried from house to house and from town 
to town, so that a man, desiring to offend his neighbour, could 
speak to him at a distance, lest the neighbour should rise up in 
his wrath and smite him on the cheekbone ; another instru- 
ment, in which the lightning became man's slave and carried 
messages over incredible spaces in less time than it takes to 
utter that message with the lips ; ships that sailed without 
sails, being propelled by hell-fires burning in their bowels ; 
frightful implements of destruction swimming under the sea, 



THE SECOND COMING OF ISSA 45 

by means of which, vessels could be broken and sunk in a 
second ; ships that dived into the water and came up again at 
a distant part of the ocean ; boats that floated in the air and 
defied the winds ; long tubes which revealed the forbidden 
mysteries, hidden to man since the beginning of time, of the 
moon and the stars and all the heavens ; huge, ugly edifices, 
in which contrivances of glimmering, crashing steel, revolv- 
ing eternally and working of their own accord, made the 
necessities of life which in his time were fashioned by 
craftsmen and labourers, who thereby bought bread for their 
children. And many other awe-inspiring things did he see ; 
and he marvelled greatly at the stupidity of men, who called 
these "labour-saving appliances," and perceived not that 
thereby labour and sorrow and poverty had greatly increased, 
so that innocent enjoyment, the love of nature, the study of 
God's Law, serene contemplation, prayer, the assembling of 
congregations for worship and praise, devotion to home and 
family, the searching of old records, and all else that had made 
life pleasant in the olden time, had become all but impossible. 

And he found that the rich had grown wicked beyond 
even the devil's wildest hopes. They lent money on usury ; 
they adulterated the food of the people ; they caused women 
and young girls and tender children to work in dreadful 
prisons, and even in the bowels of the earth ; they had seized 
the land, and extorted vast sums from those who had to live 
thereon. Everywhere the poor were oppressed, and the rich 
sinned with impunity and amassed more wealth thereby. 

And wherever the nations called on his name he found 
men without honour, women without virtue, children without 
innocence, merchants without honesty, priests without faith, 
soldiers without courage, judges without justice, lawyers with- 
out law, teachers without wisdom, kings without clemency ; 
and he discovered not one country in which, despite temples 
and priests, his message was not utterly ignored, as if he 
had never lived and taught, suffered and died. 

Heartsick and despairing, Issa came at last to the land in 



46 THE HIBBERT JOURNAL 

which his earthly life had been passed Syria, the cradle of 
his race, the promised land, the country blessed of God. 

VII. 

And so Issa stood on the shores of the Lake of Tubariyeh, 
at the foot of that hill from the slope of which he had, 
nineteen centuries before, preached his message of faith and 
love and hope to a wondering multitude. He knew every 
inch of that ground, and little was changed. Here no 
thundering, stinking, demoniacal horseless carriages sped on 
their lightning-errand, to the destruction of peace, comfort, 
and beauty. Here no ugly prisons full of clanging machinery, 
emitting foul smoke from their tall, hideous chimneys, dis- 
figured the fair landscape. Here were no telegraphs, and they 
were not needed ; for men, wishing to send messages to absent 
friends, wrote kindly epistles, or dictated such to the grave, 
learned letter-writers. Here were no telephones, and they 
were not needed ; for a man, being at strife with his neighbour, 
had the courage to go to his house and say to him face to face 
that with which he had to reproach him. Here were no tele- 
scopes, and they were not needed ; for men and women were 
grateful for the life-giving Warmth of the sun, for the gentle 
light of the moon, for the glorious sparkling of the starry 
heavens, without foolishly inquiring into distance and com- 
position and movement, and receiving lying replies thereto 
from conceited men as insignificant and pitiable and ignorant 
as themselves. Here were no railways, and they were not 
needed ; for men had sturdy legs, patient asses, strong camels, 
docile horses. 

It was the early spring, and in the soft wind blowing from 
the tideless sea the fields were like waving oceans of millions 
upon millions of gorgeously hued anemones. Lilies fairer 
than Solomon in all his glory (on whom be peace !) blossomed 
in the cottage gardens ; the scent of roses came like the 
breath of some beautiful houri ; the slopes of the hills had 
patches of burning gold, where daffodils grew in their legions ; 



THE SECOND COMING OF ISSA 47 

and the lake sparkled in the sun as if God had poured over it 
all the diamonds and sapphires of Thousand and One Nights. 

On this spot Issa had taught that which, if it had been 
followed, would have had in its wake peace, love, and happiness 
for the whole human race. And something akin to the agony 
in the garden beyond the city gates of El Kuds came back 
to him when he reflected on what had actually occurred 
since he had proved his own sincerity, and the truth and 
beauty of his message, by his death. The present generation 
not only ignored every one of his precepts, but acted 
habitually in direct contradiction to it, and persecuted those 
who maintained that he had been right after all. Among all 
the nations who called themselves by his name, he had not 
found one tribe, one town, one hamlet in which he could 
have exclaimed : " Here I will abide, for here I am loved and 
honoured and obeyed." And so he was come back to that 
nation which did him no lip-service, but which lived in 
accordance with his principles of love and piety, and which 
obeyed the Law of the Greater One, whose path he had 
prepared. 

He descended towards the water's edge as a fisherman's 
boat was landing its plentiful cargo. He saluted the master 
thereof and his brothers, and, stating that he was a wayfarer, 
weary and footsore, humble and penniless, prayed that a mite 
out of the wealth from the depths of the sea might be given 
to him, to the glory of the Lord of Hosts. And the master, 
having filled a basket, seized Issa's hand and gently led him, 
whom he supposed to be a tired and halting wanderer, to his 
house. And he placed a basin of water and a clean napkin 
before him, so that he might wash his feet. And when he 
had thus refreshed himself, the master gave him to eat and 
to drink. And Issa rested in that house for a little while and 
blessed it. And he took the master's child upon his knee 
and told the little one a wondrous story of far lands and 
gracious spirits. And when he left the house the master 
thereof gave him a loaf and a cup of milk and wished him 



48 THE HIBBERT JOURNAL 

good luck. And when Issa was alone again, he fell on his 
knees by the roadside and lifted his face to God and gave 
thanks ; and he wept with joy that at last he had found again 
love and pity and hospitality, as he had found them on that 
very spot in the years long, long past. 

And Issa blessed that land and gave it peace and increase. 

Issa stood before the throne of the Lord of Hosts to render 
an account of his earthly pilgrimage. And he said ; 

" My Lord and my Father, I have wandered over the 
world, and found everywhere wickedness and oppression, and 
greed and sin. But in one country, and in one only, have 
men received me and broken bread with me and given me a 
cup in Thy name. And to that country would I return when 
the time cometh, when Thou shalt send me with glory to 
judge the living and the dead." 

And the Prophet, who stood at the right hand of the 
Throne, said : 

" The people of which the saint speaketh is that people into 
which 1 was born, with which I lived, which I taught, for 
which I fought, among which I died. To this people give 
Thou, O Lord, Thy blessing." 

And the Lord of Hosts made answer and said : 

" So be it. 

F. W. VON HERBERT. 

SHANKLIN. 



A GREAT SOCIAL EXPERIMENT. 
REV. CHARLES PLATER, S.J. 

THE average Englishman has a certain pathetic faith in the 
efficacy of committees as instruments of social regeneration. 
When once he has grasped the purpose for which his com- 
mittee exists, he is apt to resent any further inquiries as to 
how far this purpose is related to actual social needs. Give 
him a report which records a lavish distribution of blankets, 
or an unparalleled activity in the giving of lantern-lectures, 
or the capture of a football trophy by repentant hooligans, 
and he asks no more. Possibly the results thus secured may 
indicate some constructive work, and mark an advance 
towards the realisation of a carefully considered scheme. 
Possibly they may not. Where the vision is limited to a 
narrow field of practical work, it is easy to mistake the means 
for the end, and to develop a cheery optimism based on 
fallacious statistics. 

Such philanthropic short-sightedness is not without its 
advantages. The sight of realities which lie deeper, of social 
conditions which threaten to nullify their work as inexorably 
as the incoming tide washes away the children's sand-castles, 
would probably discourage many workers from efforts which, 
however inadequate, are not without their value. Yet, on 
the other hand, some reflection upon the more fundamental 
needs of our time would give our departmental workers an 
increased solidarity and a more assured direction. Their 
efforts would lose none of their value for being seen in 

VOL. VII. No. 1. 49 4 



50 THE HIBBERT JOURNAL 

perspective. In fact, one of the most serious weaknesses of 
much of our social work lies in its exclusive attention to the 
improvement of material surroundings. It is tacitly assumed 
that a corresponding improvement in character will be the 
necessary result a result which may be left to take care of 
itself. 

In this matter we may quote the opinion of Mr C. F. G. 
Masterman, who, while admitting the value of the efforts 
which are being made to meet specific social evils, has pleaded 
eloquently for a recognition of what is, after all, the deepest 
social need of our time : 

"A background to life some common bond uniting, despite the dis- 
cordance of the competitive struggle some worthy object of enthusiasm or 
devotion behind the aimless passage of the years some spiritual force or ideal 
elevated over the shabby scene of temporary failure this is the deep, im- 
perative need of the masses in our great cities to-day. With this the mere 
discomforts incidental to changing conditions of life and the specific remediable 
social evils can be contemplated with equanimity ; without it the drifting 
through time of the interminable multitude of the unimportant becomes a 
mere nightmare vision of a striving signifying nothing, ' doing and undoing 
without end.' No material comfort, increased intellectual alertness, or wider 
capacity of attainment, will occupy the place of this one fundamental need. 
The only test of progress which is to be anything but a mere animal rejoicing 
over mere animal pleasure is the development and spread of some spiritual 
ideal which will raise into an atmosphere of effort and distinction the life of 
the ordinary man." The Heart of the Empire, p. 30. 

The inadequacy of so much of our social work lies in this, 
that not only does it touch merely the fringe of the classes in 
which it is interested, but it makes no deep impression upon 
the individual most accessible to its treatment. It tends to 
raise the standard of comfort rather than of character. It does 
not fortify men: it merely alters their surroundings. The 
change is applied from without, not educed from within. It 
reminds us of the gardeners in Alice in Wonderland who 
painted the white roses red. This was, no doubt, only a 
temporary expedient, resorted to under stress of panic. It 
could hardly have been based upon any deliberate horticultural 
theory. Even in Wonderland red roses must be grown and 
not painted. 



A GREAT SOCIAL EXPERIMENT 51 

This want of an ideal indicated by Mr Masterman is 
perhaps more sadly apparent among the workmen of this 
country than among those of the Continent. Our fiercer 
individualism makes little response, for instance, to the 
enthusiasms of a socialism which, however crude, does at least 
substitute class selfishness for individual self-seeking. It is 
clear that an ideal which is to win popular acceptance amongst 
us and lift us out of the rut of materialism must be something 
very potent, very rousing, and very simple. No aesthetic 
propagandism, no prospect of remote benefits to posterity will 
suffice. Our appeal must be to the whole man. It must be 
practical without being sordid, reasonable yet not academic, 
and emotional without hysterics. Our ideal must be high 
enough to co-ordinate all the activities of life and to satisfy the 
spiritual nature, yet so practical that it can maintain itself in 
an environment to which every other ideal would succumb 
and not only maintain itself, but serve as a stimulus and a 
guide to constructive social work. We have in fact to dis- 
cover an ideal which will illuminate the mind and strengthen 
the will of the ordinary man in the ordinary street, and we 
have to do this at a time when the national character is 
showing deplorable signs of deterioration. We are, it has 
been said, a nation at play. Work is a nuisance, and the real 
business of life is amusement. The warning has been raised 
of late in many quarters, and the point need not be emphasised 
further. But an appreciation of the danger should lead us to 
seek primarily for some method of developing virility and 
strength of character, steadiness of purpose and consciousness 
of individual responsibility. Until we have secured this, our 
material will crumble to pieces at our touch. To raise the 
standard of comfort is only to precipitate the collapse. Legis- 
lation can do little in the absence of moral stamina among a 
people. Thus the drink evil, to take but one instance, cannot 
be remedied merely by restrictive measures, though these 
undoubtedly have their value. We must give men an effective 
motive for not evading the law. This is obviously no easy task. 



52 THE HIBBERT JOURNAL 

And having found our ideal we must devise some method 
of making it dominate the lives of prosaic people. When it is 
a question of penetrating the working classes, the ordinary 
channels of social and religious activity will not suffice. 
Modern industrial conditions have isolated the workers, so that 
they now live and think apart from the rest of the community. 
Their relation to their employers rests on a cash basis, not, as 
formerly, on the brotherhood of man and the fatherhood of 
God. They have their own standards and their own ways of 
looking at things. The bulk of them will not avail themselves 
of the best-intentioned efforts to reach them. They regard 
the Churches as institutions intended for the Sunday re- 
creation of a certain section of the well-dressed. Religion 
does not claim their attention, or present itself as " good 
tidings." They will not accept the spiritual ministrations of 
those who, they feel, are out of sympathy with them. Of 
course there are exceptions. They will listen to men like 
Father Dolling, and they may respond, to some extent, to the 
work of a Settlement. But is there any likelihood that the 
Settlement movement will develop on a scale sufficient to 
affect more than an infinitesimal proportion of the working 
classes ? And even here the want of a definite ideal some- 
times leads to that worship of visible results of which we have 
spoken. As for institutions embodying purely secular ideals- 
ethical societies, courses of lectures on art, and the like it 
will be clear to those who know the deepest needs of our 
working classes that these can never serve as an ultimate goal 
of human endeavour, or produce, by themselves, any degree of 
virility. 

Hence direct action upon working men as a body is diffi- 
cult. The only possible method is to reach them through 
members of their own class. If we can form a nucleus of 
working men who feel that they have a message for their 
brethren, and will spare no pains and shirk no obloquy in 
delivering it, our problem will be solved. If only a small 
body of influential working men could be selected, brought 



A GREAT SOCIAL EXPERIMENT 53 

away from their normal surroundings, and invited to meet 
together for a few days in a comfortable country house, then, 
provided they could be won to enthusiasm for a great ideal, 
they would form an elite which would diffuse that ideal among 
others. Repeat the performance every week near several of 
the great centres of industry, and the whole tone of the 
working classes in the country will be raised. 

The suggestion may sound quixotic. But it has actually 
been tried on a very large scale within the last few years, and 
has succeeded beyond the expectations of its most sanguine 
promoters. To give some account of this work is the purpose 
of the present article. The method employed is that of the 
Spiritual Exercises of St Ignatius, and the process of going 
through these exercises is popularly known as " making a 
retreat." 

Such retreats are, of course, no new institution, but it is 
only within recent years that they have been brought to bear 
in a systematic way upon the working classes. As so directed 
they have been worked with phenomenal success in many 
countries, and are indeed of universal application a point 
which must invest them with an additional interest for 
ourselves. But it is in Belgium that they have reached their 
most complete development, and to their results in that 
country we may restrict our attention. Although the work 
in question is primarily a religious one, its social effects have 
been so satisfactory that it is now supported by many publicists 
and social workers who have but little sympathy with the 
religious system upon which the work is based. It will be 
seen in what practical ways these supporters have given 
expression to their belief in its efficacy. 

The story of the recent development of the retreats in 
Belgium may be briefly told. In 1890 forty-two workmen 
were invited to spend a few days at a Catholic College in 
Charleroi for the purpose of " making a retreat " an operation 
the nature of which may perhaps become clearer as we proceed. 
They came every morning, and dispersed at night to their own 



54 THE HIBBERT JOURNAL 

homes. It was soon seen that this arrangement was unsatis- 
factory. If a retreat is to succeed, the men must be with- 
drawn entirely from their normal surroundings. A retreat is 
an orderly process, an " exercise," which must be made without 
interruption. It is this that marks it oft 1 from " missions " and 
similar intermittent appeals to the conscience. 

A house, then, had to be procured in which workmen 
might spend at least three full days in uninterrupted retreat. 
This was effected in 1891 at Fayt-lez-Manage, and the first 
"enclosed" retreat (retraite fermec) was given to twenty-six 
workmen. Before long all Belgium became aware that a new 
social force of extraordinary significance was at work in the 
country. 

Three years later a second house was built at Ghent. 
Since then four more houses have sprung up, at Arlon, Lierre, 
Liege, and Alken. Their popularity is sufficiently attested by 
the following figures. At the first house (Fayt), during the 
sixteen years of its existence, retreats have been given to more 
than 22,000 men. Ghent in fourteen years has received over 
18,000 men ; Lierre in eight years, about the same number. 
About 10,000 men made retreats in the various houses during 
the year 1907. New houses are called for, and the possibilities 
of the work are almost endless. It should be said that the 
number of men who make a retreat together in a single house 
is about forty. 

The six houses now in existence are all managed on the 
same general lines, and a description of one of them will 
suffice to give some idea of the rest. We may select for our 
purpose the establishment at Lierre, founded in 1899. The 
house, which, though in the town, stands in extensive grounds, 
is a cheerful building of red brick and stone, built, as the 
Father Superior or Warden maintains, in the very purest 
Flemish style. Next to the house is a chapel, for the 
exclusive use of those who make the retreats. The garden 
is well planted with trees, and the men may walk about in it 
at their pleasure. A garden, it may be remarked, is indispens- 



A GREAT SOCIAL EXPERIMENT 55 

able for a retreat. The men are not accustomed to dwell 
with their own thoughts, and to box them up in a small room 
for three days would conduce to a state of nervous tension 
quite fatal to success. In the present case, besides the garden, 
we find a large winter-garden or glass-enclosed court, where 
the men can take exercise in wet weather. The ground floor 
of the house is occupied by the kitchen, the dining-hall, the 
common room, billiard-room, and library. The upper stories 
contain some fifty bedrooms, plainly furnished. Every part 
of the house is beautifully light, and there seems to be white 
paint everywhere. 

Each week a batch of men comes to the house for a three 
days' retreat. Most of these are workmen, but not unfrequently 
a special retreat will be given to a group of students or 
employers or soldiers or professional men or priests. The 
various social classes are generally kept distinct in order that 
the instructions may have special reference to the needs of 
one particular class. But sometimes exceptions are asked for, 
and the present writer has seen distinguished senators, financiers, 
and lawyers going through a retreat side by side with a band 
of workmen. At Lierre we chiefly see agricultural labourers, 
masons, navvies, carpenters, railway employees, and the like. 
They come in from the neighbouring districts, from the 
surrounding villages, and even from the more distant towns 
like Antwerp and Louvain. 

How, it may be asked, is it possible to get ordinary 
workmen to immerse themselves in solitude for three days in 
order to give themselves to serious reflection upon the gravest 
problems ? The answer is that, once the retreats have been 
started, the men themselves do the recruiting, and a steady 
stream of visitors is kept up. The workman is reached by 
the workman. In the beginning, of course, only picked men 
are invited men of a serious turn of mind, who have already 
something like an ideal. The purpose of a retreat is carefully 
explained to them, and they are urged to try the experiment. 
When they have done so they may be depended upon to 



56 THE HIBBERT JOURNAL 

persuade a number of their fellow-workmen to follow their 
example. The good effects are seen at once in the strengthen- 
ing and tranquillising of character. The retreat gives the 
men something to live for. It supplies what, as we have 
said, is the fundamental social need a background to life. 
Some are led to make it by curiosity ; others, strange as it 
may seem, by bravado. None are refused if they will but 
undertake to keep the rules of the house, and avoid disturbing 
the others. In almost every case the result is the same. 
Bitterness of spirit and hardness of heart give way, almost 
under our eyes, to a genial kindliness and a hopefulness which 
is based on a new appreciation of the meaning of life. The 
men lose none of their desire to combat social evils. On the 
contrary, their zeal is increased. But they come to see that 
all successful effort in this direction must be based upon a 
reformation of character ; and their chief desire, on leaving, 
is to win their fellows to a recognition of the value of these 
retreats as a foundation for social reform. One man out of 
the hundreds working in a big industrial establishment will 
present himself at one of the houses. After a few weeks 
three or four more are sure to arrive. These form a com- 
mittee which, the following year, will perhaps send a dozen. 
And so the work grows. When employers become aware of 
the increased conscientiousness and reliability which these 
retreats foster, they almost invariably (whatever their own 
religious convictions may be) do all in their power to foster 
the work by facilitating the men's absence from work, paying 
their wages during the interval, supplying their travelling 
fare, and even making donations to the houses. And many 
employers make retreats, sometimes by themselves, and some- 
times with the workmen. A better understanding between 
the two classes is thus effected, and something of the old guild 
spirit is the result. 

Returning to the house at Lierre, we may imagine our- 
selves present at the arrival of a batch of workmen, some of 
whom, probably, have never made a retreat before. The 



A GREAT SOCIAL EXPERIMENT 57 

house wears a somewhat depressed air during the first evening. 
Many of the men look intensely bored ; some are shy and 
awkward, others assume an air of suspicious defiance, as if to 
intimate that they at least are not going to be imposed upon. 
Attempts to engage in conversation with them are not particu- 
larly encouraging. They stray about the galleries, staring at 
the religious pictures and statues, or exchanging whispered 
comments. The supper-bell comes as a relief, and the crowd 
drifts off to the dining-hall. After supper the men amuse 
themselves as they will with cards and billiards, pipes and 
beer. Then follows Benediction and a short explanation 
of the retreat, its objects, the rules of the house, and 
so forth. 

The following is the " order of the day " for the next three 
days: The men rise at 6 and, after morning prayers in 
common, hear Mass. During breakfast a spiritual book is 
read for a few minutes. After breakfast the men smoke, 
walk about the grounds, or play at such games as bowls, 
billiards, and draughts. At 8.15 they go to the chapel, where 
the priest who is conducting the retreat sets before them for 
the space of about half an hour some elementary thoughts or 
" points." They then go to their rooms in silence and think 
over what they have just heard. Then they read a religious 
book (the Gospels, the Imitation of Christ, the life of some 
saint, and so forth) in the grounds or reading-room, or in their 
own rooms. Later on they say the rosary together, walking 
in the grounds or in the covered court. At 10.30 there are 
" points " in the chapel as before, followed again by " medita- 
tion " in private. After the midday dinner the men amuse 
themselves as after breakfast. At 2 p.m. come " Stations of 
the Cross," spiritual reading, rosary in the grounds, and a 
hymn in the chapel ; then the afternoon " points and medita- 
tion." At 4.30, coffee and conversation. Strict silence is 
maintained excepting during these fixed periods after meals. 
Then more spiritual reading, rosary in the garden, hymn in 
the chapel, evening "points and meditation." Supper at 7 is 



58 THE HIBBERT JOURNAL 

followed by recreation as before. Finally Benediction at 9.30 
and night prayers. Confessions are heard on the second day, 
and Holy Communion is administered on the third. On the 
morning of the fourth the men take their departure. 

This programme does not sound exciting. To those who 
have never had practical experience of a retreat, it might 
appear wearisome in the extreme. Such, indeed, is the view 
generally taken of it on their arrival in the house by the work- 
men who make it for the first time. Yet the fact remains 
that the very men who, it may be, showed every signs of 
boredom at the beginning, and during the first and even the 
second day, are obviously sorry to leave the house on the 
morning of the fourth, and declare their intention of coming 
the following year. Indeed, it is sometimes no easy matter to 
get rid of them. They frequently leave behind them in their 
rooms letters expressing their gratitude ; these notes are often 
extremely touching in their simple sincerity. 

It may be said at once that the whole force of the retreat 
lies in the " points " and " meditations " made four times a day. 
The hymns, rosary, and the like are intended to relax the 
tension without dissipating the mind. The men must be kept 
moving or singing or praying or reading ; otherwise their 
minds will revert to their normal surroundings and familiar 
associations, or else, it may be, become a prey to melancholy 
and morbid introspection. But such is the bent given to them 
by the four periods of meditation, that the pious exercises are 
not felt as a constraint. 

The matter proposed for consideration in these " points " is 
not chosen at haphazard, but follows the orderly course of the 
Spiritual Exercises of St Ignatius a book, by the way, which 
yields little of its secret to the casual reader, but has to be 
" worked through " in the literal sense of the term, and this 
under the guidance of those who are qualified to present it. 
Hence it is not a question, in these retreats, of preaching 
detached sermons at the men four times a day. This would 
indeed be more than flesh and blood could stand. It is a ques- 



A GREAT SOCIAL EXPERIMENT 59 

tion rather of leading the men on, step by step, to serious 
reflection upon the deepest truths of life. They do the real 
work, and the expression " preaching a retreat " gives a totally 
wrong impression of the office of the director. 

The appeal is to the whole man. Vague sentimentalism 
a mere emotional <k revival " with its inevitable reaction forms 
no part of the process. Neither, on the other hand, are the 
" points " abstract or academic. In orderly course the men are 
led onward, not by hysterical rhetoric but by calm and earnest 
statement of fact, to see the meaning of their lives. Man, they 
are led to reflect, has been created by God to render praise, 
reverence, and service to his Maker. All other things exist in 
order to help him to fulfil that purpose aright. Here at once 
is a standard by which he may judge everything he employs- 
money, opportunities, friends, health, life itself. Here is a 
basis for (among other things) his social duties. All his 
aspirations after material well-being fall into their place ; all 
that is good in them is developed and justified, all that is crude 
or exaggerated is refined away. The malice of sin and the 
necessity for its punishment are explained. Each one makes 
a careful survey of his past life in the light of the great 
principle just obtained. And, lest the soul should lose courage, 
it is told of the fatherly mercy of God, as displayed, perhaps, 
in the parable of the prodigal son, or the story of the woman 
who was a sinner. Then the meaning of the Redemption is 
explained. Appeal is made to the generosity of each. He is 
Christ's soldier, and a great battle is raging, though he guessed 
it not, between the powers of light and those of darkness. 
The scene of it is his own factory, his own club, his own home. 
On which side will he range himself? Before God he makes 
his choice. The life of Christ is passed in review and made 
the pattern on which each is to mould his own life in future. 
The story of the Passion leaves its mark. Then, strengthened 
and tranquillised, the men come to see how the love of God is 
the force which raises man above himself, ennobles his life, and 
gives him eternal happiness. To all this an assent is given 



60 THE HIBBERT JOURNAL 

which is real, and not, as Cardinal Newman puts it, " notional." 
It forms the starting-point of a new life. 

That the men do undergo a deep spiritual experience will 
be evident to anyone who has stayed in one of these houses 
of retreat, seen them at their prayers, listened to their con- 
versation, and watched their after lives. A kind of astonished 
gratitude is seen in their faces. They go forth with a work 
to do, and they set about doing it in a practical and resolute 
fashion. When once back at their daily work they stand out 
boldly against the degrading influences which surround them, 
and endeavour, often with very great success, to form a 
healthy public opinion. The subsequent organisation of those 
who have made a retreat is, of course, a matter of great 
importance. Where possible they spend a day of quiet 
recollection and helpful converse every month or so in one 
of the retreat houses, thereby reinforcing the impressions first 
made there. On the religious side the effects are seen in 
every direction. Churches, once almost deserted, are filled 
with workmen to whom religion has become the central 
reality of their lives. They will march to Mass and the 
Sacraments in processions which number hundreds of men, 
with bands and banners, and this in centres where a few years 
ago materialism was threatening to eat out every trace of 
the supernatural. 

But it is rather with the social effects of these retreats 
that the present paper is concerned, and here the results 
gained have won the admiration of all who are interested in 
social welfare. The employer and the workman have been 
brought together and have gained a new conception of their 
respective duties. The former has come to look upon the 
latter not as a tool but as a fellow-man, whose moral and 
material well-being must not be prejudiced by any contract 
made between them. The latter has found something which 
gives to every detail of his life a meaning and a value. " The 
dignity of labour" is henceforth no empty phrase. Work 
is not something to be reduced to a minimum, and abandoned 



A GREAT SOCIAL EXPERIMENT 61 

as soon as possible. The dignity of work is seen to arise not 
from its compulsion, but from the spirit in which it is done. 
Improved workmanship and increased conscientiousness at 
once result. All that hinders ennobling work is resolutely 
resisted. The drink evil is combated with a success almost 
incredible to those who pin their faith to " cures " or legisla- 
tion. Organisations to improve the social condition of the 
destitute or the working classes arise on every side. Co- 
operative institutions and mutual societies are multiplied, 
sound social legislation is promoted, the weak are helped, 
and the helpless are supported without being pauperised. 
Family life is held in honour, and the household becomes the 
school of civic virtues. The men work for their children, and 
no longer regard offspring as obstacles to enjoyment. The 
gospel of selfishness and self-indulgence becomes discredited. 
The idea of fraternity supplies at last not a mere parrot-cry 
of class selfishness, but an illuminating guide in practical life, 
and a force which makes for social solidarity. 

It may be added that retreats of the same sort have been 
provided for working women in Belgium, and this on an even 
more astonishing scale. Fourteen houses exist in which 
retreats are given to between thirty and fifty women almost 
every week. The results are seen in a widespread improve- 
ment of family life, due to increased thrift, sobriety, devotion 
to duty, and a strengthening of family ties. 

After all, these retreats appeal to human nature, and not 
to mere national peculiarities or accidental qualities in those 
to whom they are addressed. Hence they are of universal 
application, as, indeed, the facts have shown. They do not 
depend for their efficacy on the more or less emotional 
temperament of particular nations, nor even on the prevailing 
religious tone of a district. They have of late been introduced 
with excellent results into the most industrial and least re- 
ligious centres of Germany. They have, as it would be 
interesting to show, been addressed with success to the non- 
European mind. 



62 THE HIBBERT JOURNAL 

Regular houses of retreats for girls and women of all classes 
of society are now established in London, Manchester, and 
Liverpool. Occasional retreats are given to working men in 
London and the north. And finally, a special house of retreats 
for men (Compstall Hall) was opened last March near Marple. 
It is an attractive country mansion, standing in ten acres of 
ground. To this house different batches of about twenty men, 
mainly working men, come every week to spend three full 
days in retreat. It is hoped to enlarge the house so as to 
accommodate fifty visitors at a time. There is no difficulty in 
getting the men : the work is its own best advertisement. 
Those who have already made retreats at Compstall Hall 
announce their intention of returning next year and bringing 
their friends. There can be no doubt about the deep impression 
which these retreats are making. 

To sum up. In the regeneration of family life, and the 
providing of the working classes with a background to life, 
lies the chief hope of the nation's welfare. To this end, as 
experience has shown, the institution of spiritual retreats is a 
singularly valuable means. For the effects of these retreats 
are as wide as life itself; and one of these effects, which, 
though secondary, is not unimportant, has been an improve- 
ment in the material conditions of the working classes. 

CHARLES PLATER. 

ST BKUNO'S COLLEGE. 



HEGEL AND HIS METHOD. 
PROFESSOR WILLIAM JAMES. 

DIRECTLY or indirectly, that strange and powerful genius 
Hegel has done more to strengthen idealistic pantheism in 
thoughtful circles than all other influences put together. In 
no philosophy is the fact that a philosopher's vision and the 
technique he uses in proof of it are two different things more 
palpably evident than in him. The vision in his case was that 
of a world in which reason holds all things in solution and 
accounts for all the irrationality that superficially appears by 
taking it up as a " moment " into itself. This vision was so 
intense in Hegel and the tone of authority with which he spoke 
from out of the midst of it was so weighty that the impression 
he made has never been effaced. Once dilated to the scale of 
the master's eye, the disciples' sight could not contract to any 
lesser prospect. The technique which Hegel used to prove his 
vision was the so-called dialectic method, but here his fortune 
has been quite contrary. Hardly a recent disciple has felt his 
particular applications of the method to be entirely satisfactory. 
Many of them have let them drop entirely, treating them 
rather as a sort of provisional stopgap, symbolic of what might 
some day prove possible of execution, but having no literal 
cogency or value now. Yet these very same disciples hold to 
the vision as a revelation that can never pass away. The case 
is curious and worthy of our study. 

It is still more curious in that these same disciples, although 
willing to abandon any particular instance of the dialectic 



63 



64 THE HIBBERT JOURNAL 

method to its critics, are unshakably sure that in some shape 
the said dialectic method is the key to truth. What is this 
dialectic method ? It is itself a part of the Hegelian vision 
or intuition, and a part that finds the strongest echo in 
empiricism and common sense. Great injustice is done to 
Hegel by treating him as primarily a reasoner. He is in 
reality a naively observant man, only beset with a perverse 
preference for the use of technical and logical jargon. He 
plants himself in the empirical flux of things and gets the 
impression of what happens. His mind is in very truth impres- 
sionistic ; and his thought, when once you put yourself at the 
animating centre of it, is the easiest thing in the world to catch 
the pulse of and to follow. 

Any author is easy if you can catch the centre of his vision. 
From the centre in Hegel come those towering sentences of 
his that are comparable only to Luther's, as where, speaking of 
the ontological proof of God's existence from the concept of 
Him as the ens perfectissimum to which no attribute can be 
lacking, he says : "It would be strange if the Notion, the very 
heart of the mind, or in a word the concrete totality we call 
God, were not rich enough to embrace so poor a category as 
Being, the very poorest and most abstract of all for nothing 
can be more insignificant than Being." But if Hegel's central 
thought is easy to catch, his habits of speech make his applica- 
tion of it to details exceedingly difficult to follow. His 
passion for the slipshod in the way of sentences; his unprincipled 
playing fast and loose with terms ; his abominable vocabulary, 
calling what completes a thing its " negation," for example ; 
his systematic refusal to let you know whether he is talking 
logic or physics or psychology, his deliberately adopted 
ambiguity and vagueness, in short : all these things make his 
present-day readers wish to tear their hair or his out in 
desperation. Like Byron's corsair, he leaves "a name to 
other times, linked with one virtue and a thousand crimes." 

The virtue was the vision, which was really in two parts. 
The first part was that reason is all-inclusive ; the second was 



HEGEL AND HIS METHOD 65 

that things are "dialectic." Let me say a word about this 
second part of Hegel's vision. 

The impression that any naif person gets who plants 
himself innocently in the flux of things is that things are off 
their balance. Whatever equilibriums our finite experiences 
attain to are but provisional. Martinique volcanoes shatter 
our Wordsworthian equilibrium with Nature. Pathological 
accidents, mental or physical, break up the slowly built-up 
equilibriums men reach in family life and in their civic and 
professional relations. Intellectual enigmas frustrate our 
scientific systems, and the ultimate cruelty of the universe 
upsets our religious attitudes and outlooks. Of no special 
system of good attained does the universe recognise the value 
as sacred. Down it tumbles, over it goes, to feed the ravenous 
appetite for destruction of the larger system of history in 
which it stood for a moment as a landing-place and stepping- 
stone. This dogging of everything by its negative, its fate, 
its undoing, this perpetual moving on to something future 
which shall supersede the present, this is the Hegelian intuition 
of the essential provisionality, and consequent unreality, of 
everything empirical and finite. Take any concrete finite 
thing and try to hold it fast. You cannot, for so held, it 
proves not to be concrete at all, but an arbitrary extract or 
abstract which you have made from the remainder of empirical 
reality. The rest of things invade and overflow both it and 
you together, and defeat your rash attempt. Any partial 
view of the world tears the part out of its relations, leaves out 
some truth concerning it, is untrue of it, falsifies it. The full 
truth about anything involves more than that thing. Nothing 
less than the whole of everything can be the truth of anything 
at all. Taken so far, Hegel is not only harmless, but accurate. 
There is a dialectic movement in things, if such it please you 
to call it, one that the whole institution of concrete life estab- 
lishes ; but it is one that can be described and accounted for in 
terms of the pluralistic vision of things far more naturally than 

in the terms to which Hegel reduced it. Empiricism knows 
Voi, VIL No. 1. 5 



66 THE HIBBERT JOURNAL 

that everything is in a surrounding world of other things, and 
that if you leave it to work there it will inevitably meet with 
friction and opposition. Its rivals and enemies will destroy 
it unless it can buy them off by compromising some part of 
its original pretensions. 

But Hegel saw this undeniable characteristic of the world 
we live in in a non-empirical light. Let the idea of the thing 
work in your thought all alone, he fancied, and the same con- 
sequences will follow. It will be negated by the opposite 
ideas that dog it, and can only survive by entering, along with 
them, into some kind of treaty. This treaty will be an instance 
of the so-called "higher synthesis" of everything with its 
negative ; and Hegel's originality lay in transporting the pro- 
cess from the sphere of percepts to that of concepts and treating 
it as the universal method by which every kind of life, logical, 
physical, or psychological, is mediated. Not to the sensible 
facts as such, then, did Hegel turn for the secret of what 
keeps existence going, but rather to the conceptual way of 
treating them. Concepts were not in his eyes the static self- 
contained things that previous logicians had supposed, but 
were germinative and passed beyond themselves into each 
other by what he called their immanent dialectic. In ignoring 
each other as they do, they virtually exclude and deny each 
other, he thought, and thus in a manner introduce each other. 
So the dialectic logic according to him had to supersede the 
" logic of identity " in which since Aristotle all Europe had 
been brought up. 

This view of concepts is Hegel's revolutionary performance ; 
but so studiously vague and ambiguous are all his expressions 
of it that one can hardly tell whether it is the concepts as such 
or the sensible experiences and elements conceived that Hegel 
really means to work with. The only thing that is certain is 
that whatever you may say of his procedure some one will 
accuse you of misunderstanding it. I make no claim to under- 
standing it ; I treat it merely impressionistically. 

So treating it, I regret that he should have called it by 



HEGEL AND HIS METHOD 67 

the name of logic. Clinging as he did to the vision of a really 
living world, and refusing to be content with a chopped-up 
intellectualist picture of it, it is a pity that he should have 
adopted the very word that intellectualism had already pre- 
empted. But he clung fast to the old rationalist contempt 
for the immediately given world of sense and all its squalid 
particulars, and never tolerated the notion that the form of 
philosophy might be hypothetical only. His own system had 
to be a product of eternal reason, so the word logic, with 
its suggestions of coercive necessity, was the only word he 
could find natural. He pretended therefore to be using the 
a priori method, and to be working by a scanty equipment of 
ancient logical terms position, negation, reflection, universal, 
particular, individual, and the like. But what he really worked 
by was his own empirical perceptions, which exceeded and 
overflowed his miserably insufficient logical categories in 
every instance of their use. 

What he did with the category of negation was his most 
original stroke. The orthodox view was that you can advance 
logically through the field of concepts only by going from the 
same to the same. Hegel felt deeply the sterility of this law 
of conceptual thought ; he saw that in a fashion negation also 
relates things ; and he had the brilliant idea of transcending 
the ordinary logic by treating advance from the different to the 
different as if it were also a necessity of thought. " The so-called 
maxim of identity," he wrote, " is supposed to be accepted by 
the consciousness of everyone. But the language which such a 
law demands, * a planet is a planet, magnetism is magnetism, 
mind is mind,' deserves to be called silliness. No mind either 
speaks or thinks or forms conceptions in accordance with this 
law, and no existence of any kind whatever conforms to it. 
We must never view identity as abstract identity, to the 
exclusion of all difference. That is the touchstone for dis- 
tinguishing all bad philosophy from what alone deserves the 
name of philosophy. If thinking were no more than registering 
abstract identities, it would be a most superfluous performance. 



68 THE HIBBERT JOURNAL 

Things and concepts are identical with themselves only in so 
far as at the same time they involve distinction." 1 

The distinction that Hegel has in mind here is naturally 
in the first instance distinction from all other things or 
concepts. But in his hands this quickly develops into contra- 
diction of them, and finally, reflected back upon itself, into 
self-contradiction ; and the immanent self-contradictoriness of 
all finite concepts thenceforth becomes the propulsive logical 
force that moves the world. 2 " Isolate a thing from all its 
relations," says Dr Edward Caird, 3 expounding Hegel, "and 
try to assert it by itself; you find that it has negated itself as 
well as its relations. The thing in itself is nothing." Or, to 
quote Hegel's own words : " When we suppose an existent A, 
and another B, B is at first defined as the other. But A is 
just as much the other of B. Both are others in the same 
fashion. . . . 4 Other ' is the other by itself, therefore the 
other of every other, consequently the other of itself, the 
simply unlike itself, the self-negator, the self-alterer," etc. 4 
Hegel writes elsewhere : " The finite, as implicitly other than 
what it is, is forced to surrender its own immediate or natural 
being, and to turn suddenly into its opposite. . . . Dialectic 
is the universal and irresistible power before which nothing 
can stay. . . . Summum jus, summa injuria to drive an 
abstract right to excess is to commit injustice. . . . Extreme 
anarchy and extreme despotism lead to one another. Pride 
comes before a fall. Too much wit outwits itself. Joy brings 
tears, melancholy a sardonic smile." 6 To which may well be 
added that most human institutions, by the purely technical 
and professional manner in which they come to be administered, 
end by becoming obstacles to the very purposes which their 
founders had in view. 

1 Hegel, Smaller Logic, tr. Wallace, pp. 184, 185. 

2 Cf. Hegel's fine vindication of this function of contradiction in his 
Wissenschaft der Logik, Bk. ii. sec. 1, chap. ii. C, Anmerkung 3. 

3 Hegel (in Blackwood's Philosophical Classics), p. 162. 

4 Wissenschaft der Logik, Bk. i. sec. 1, chap. ii. B, a. 

5 Wallace's translation of the Smaller Logic, p. 128. 



HEGEL AND HIS METHOD 69 

Once catch well the knack of this scheme of thought and 
you are lucky if you ever get away from it. It is all you can 
see. Let anyone pronounce anything, and your feeling of a 
contradiction being implied becomes a habit, almost a motor 
habit in some persons who symbolise by a stereotyped gesture 
the position, sublation, and final reinstatement involved. If 
you say " two " or " many," your speech bewrayeth you, for 
the very name collects them into one. If you express doubt, 
your expression contradicts its content, for the doubt itself is 
not doubted but affirmed. If you say " disorder," what is that 
but a certain bad kind of order ? If you say " indetermination," 
you are determining just that. If you say " Nothing but the 
unexpected happens," the unexpected becomes what you 
expect. If you say " All things are relative," to what is the all 
of them itself relative ? If you say " no more," there is already 
more, namely, the region in which more is sought, but no more 
is found to know a limit as such is consequently already to 
have got beyond it and so forth, throughout as many examples 
as one cares to cite. 

Whatever you posit appears thus as one-sided and negates 
its other, which, being equally one-sided, negates it ; and, 
since this situation is instable, the two contradictory terms 
have together to engender a higher truth of which they both 
appear as indispensable members, mutually mediating aspects 
of that higher concept or situation in thought. 

Every higher total, however provisional and relative, thus 
reconciles the contradictions which the parts abstracted from 
it prove implicitly to contain. Rationalism is the way of 
thinking that methodically subordinates parts to wholes, so 
Hegel here is rationalistic through and through. The only 
whole by which all contradictions are reconciled is for him the 
absolute whole of wholes, the all-inclusive reason to which 
Hegel himself gave the name of the absolute Idea. 

Empirical instances of the way in which higher unities 
reconcile contradictions are innumerable, so here again Hegel's 
vision, taken merely impressionistically, agrees with countless 



70 THE HIBBERT JOURNAL 

facts. Somehow life does, out of its total resources, find ways 
of satisfying opposites at once. This is precisely the para- 
doxical aspect which much of our civilisation presents. Peace 
we secure by armaments, liberty by laws and constitutions, 
simplicity and naturalness are the consummate result of arti- 
ficial breeding and training, health, strength, and wealth are 
increased only by lavish use, expense, and wear. Our mistrust 
of mistrust engenders our commercial system of credit ; our 
tolerance of revolutionary utterances is the only way of lessen- 
ing their danger ; our charity has to say no to beggars in order 
not to defeat its own desires ; the true epicurean has to 
observe great sobriety ; the way to certainty lies through 
radical doubt ; virtue signifies not innocence but the know- 
ledge of sin and its overcoming. 

The ethical and religious life are full of contradictions held 
in solution. You hate your enemy ? well, forgive him, and 
thereby heap coals of fire on his head ; to realise yourself, 
renounce yourself ; to save your soul, first lose it ; in short, die 
to live. 

From such massive examples one easily generalises Hegel's 
vision. Roughly, his " dialectic " picture is a fair account of a 
good deal of the world. It sounds paradoxical, but whenever 
you once place yourself at the point of view of any higher 
synthesis you see exactly how the thing comes about. Take, 
for example, the conflict between our carnivorous appetites and 
hunting instincts and the sympathy with animals which our 
refinement is bringing in its train. We have found how to 
reconcile the opposites most effectively by establishing game 
laws and close seasons and by keeping domestic herds. The 
creatures preserved thus are preserved for the sake of slaughter, 
truly, but if not preserved for that reason, not one of them 
would be alive at all. Their will to live and our will to kill 
them thus harmoniously combine. 

Merely as a reporter of certain aspects of the actual, Hegel 
then is great and true. But he aimed at being something far 
greater than an empirical reporter, so I must say something 



HEGEL AND HIS METHOD 71 

about that essential aspect of his thought. Hegel was 
dominated by the notion of a truth that should prove incon- 
trovertible, binding on everyone, and certain, which should be 
the truth, one, indivisible, eternal, objective, and necessary, to 
which all our particular thinking must lead as to its consum- 
mation. This is the dogmatic ideal, the postulate uncriticised, 
undoubted, and unchallenged, of all rationalisers in philosophy. 
"/ have never doubted" a recent writer says, that truth is 
universal and single and timeless, a single content or signi- 
ficance, one and whole and complete. 1 Advance in thinking, 
in the Hegelian universe, has in short to proceed by the words 
must be rather than by the weaker words may be, which are all 
that empiricists can use. 

Now Hegel found that his idea of an immanent movement 
through the field of concepts by way of " dialectic " negation 
played most beautifully into the hands of this rationalistic 
demand for something absolute and inconcussum in the way 
of truth. It is easy to see how. If you affirm anything, for 
example that A is, and simply leave the matter thus, you 
leave it at the mercy of anyone who may supervene and say, 
" Not A, but B is." If he does say so, your statement does not 
refute him : it simply contradicts him, just as his contradicts 
you. The only way of securing your affirmation about A is 
by getting it into a form which will by implication negate its 
negation in advance. The mere absence of negation is not 
enough ; it must be present, but present with its fangs drawn : 
your A must not only be an A, it must be a non-not-A as 
well ; it must already have cancelled all the B's or made them 
innocuous by having negated them already. Double negation 
is thus the only form of affirmation that fully plays into the 
hands of the dogmatic ideal. Simply and innocently affirma- 
tive statements are good enough for empiricists, but unfit for 
rationalist use, lying open as they do to every accidental 
contradictor, and exposed to every puff of doubt. The final 
truth must be something to which there is no imaginable 

1 Joachim, The Nature of Truth, Oxford, 1906, pp. 22, 178. 



72 THE HIBBERT JOURNAL 

alternative, because it contains all its alternatives inside of 
itself as moments already taken account of and overcome. It 
involves its own alternatives as elements of itself, is, in the 
phrase so often repeated, its own other, made so by the methode 
der absoluten negativitat. 

Formally, this scheme of an organism of truth that has 
already fed as it were on its own liability to death, so that, 
death once dead for it, there is no more dying then, is the very 
fulfilment of the rationalistic aspiration. That one and only 
one whole, with all its parts involved in it, negating and 
making one another impossible if abstracted and taken singly, 
but necessitating and holding one another in place if the whole 
of them be taken integrally, is the literal ideal sought after, 
it is the very diagram and picture of that notion of the truth 
with no outlying alternative, which so dominates the dogmatic 
imagination. Once we have taken in the features of the 
diagram that so successfully solves the world-old problem, the 
older ways of proving the necessity of judgments cease to 
give us satisfaction. Hegel's way we think must be the right 
one. The true must be essentially the self-reflecting self- 
contained recurrent, that which secures itself by including its 
own other and negating it, that makes a spherical system 
with no loose ends hanging out for foreignness to get a hold 
upon, that is for ever rounded in and closed, not strung along 
rectilinearly and open at its ends like that universe of simply 
collective or additive form that Hegel calls the world of the 
bad infinite, and that is all that empiricism, starting with 
simply posited single parts and elements, is ever able to 
attain to. 

No one can possibly deny the sublimity of this Hegelian 
conception. It is surely in the grand style, if there be such 
a thing as a grand style in philosophy. For us, however, it 
is so far a merely formal and diagrammatic conception, for 
with the actual content of absolute truth, as Hegel tries to 
set it forth, few disciples have been satisfied, and I do not 
propose to refer at all to the concreter parts of his philosophy. 



HEGEL AND HIS METHOD 73 

The main thing now is to grasp the vision, and feel the 
attractiveness of the abstract scheme of a statement self- 
secured by involving double negation. Absolutists who make 
no use of Hegel's own technique are really working by his 
method. Reality, according to them, is that which you 
implicitly affirm in the very attempt to deny it ; truth is that 
from which every variation proves self-contradictory: this is 
the supreme insight of rationalism, and to-day the best must- 
be's of rationalist argumentation are but so many attempts to 
communicate it to the hearer. Thus we can consider Hegel 
and the other absolutists to be supporting the same system. 
The next point I wish to dwell on is the part played by vicious 
intellect ualism in the system's structure. 

Rationalism in general thinks it gets the fulness of truth 
by turning away from sensation to conception, conception 
obviously giving the more universal and immutable picture. 
What I have just called vicious intellectualism is the habit of 
assuming that a concept Deludes from any reality conceived 
by its means everything not included in the concept's definition. 

Now Hegel himself in building up his method of double 
negation offers the vividest possible example of this vicious intel- 
lectualism. Every idea of a finite thing is of course a concept 
of that thing and not a concept of anything else. But Hegel 
treats this not being a concept of anything else as if it were 
equivalent to the concept of anything else not being, or, in other 
words, as if it were a denial or negation of everything else. 
Then, as the other things thus implicitly contradicted by the 
thing first conceived also by the same law contradict it, the 
pulse of dialectic begins to beat and the famous triads to grind 
out the cosmos. If anyone finds the process here to be a 
luminous one he must be left to the illumination, he must 
remain an undisturbed Hegelian. What others feel as the 
intolerable ambiguity, verbosity, and unscrupulousness of the 
master's way of deducing things, he will probably ascribe- 
since divine oracles are notoriously hard to interpret to the 
" difficulty " that habitually accompanies profundity. For my 



74 THE HIBBERT JOURNAL 

own part, there seems something grotesque and saugrenu in 
the pretension of a style so disobedient to the first rules of 
sound communication between minds, to be the authentic 
mother-tongue of reason, and to keep step more accurately 
than any other style does with the Absolute's own ways of 
thinking. I do not therefore take Hegel's technical apparatus 
seriously at all. I regard him rather as one of those numerous 
original seers who can never learn how to articulate. His 
would-be coercive logic counts for nothing in my eyes ; but 
that does not in the least impugn the philosophic importance 
of his conception of the Absolute if we take it merely hypo- 
thetically as one of the great types of cosmic vision. 

Taken thus hypothetically, it must be seriously discussed. 
But before doing so I must call attention to an odd peculiarity 
in the Hegelian procedure. Hegel considers that the immedi- 
ate finite data of experience are " untrue," because they are 
not " their own others." They are negated by what is external 
to them. The Absolute is true because it and it only has 
attained to being its own other. (These words sound queer 
enough, but readers who know a little of Hegel will follow 
them. ) Everything hinges here on whether the several pieces 
of finite experience may not be truly described when they are 
also said to be in any wise their own others. When conceptu- 
ally or intellectualistically treated, they, of course, cannot be 
their own others. Every abstract concept excludes what it 
does not include ; and if such concepts are adequate substitutes 
for reality's concrete pulses, the latter must square themselves 
with intellectualistic logic, and no one of them in any sense 
can claim to be its own other. If, however, the conceptual 
treatment of the flow of reality should prove for any good 
reason to be inadequate, and to have a practical rather than a 
theoretical or speculative value, then an independent empirical 
look into the constitution of reality's pulses might possibly 
show that some of them are their own others, in the self- 
same sense in which the Absolute is maintained to be so 
by Hegel. 



HEGEL AND HIS METHOD 75 

May not the remedy lie, then, rather in revising the in- 
tellectualist criticism than in first adopting it and then trying to 
undo its consequences by an arbitrary hypothesis ? May not the 
flux of our finite sensible experience itself contain a rationality 
that has been overlooked, so that the real remedy would con- 
sist in harking back to that rationality more intelligently, and 
not in advancing in the opposite direction away from it, and 
even away beyond the intellectualist criticism that disinte- 
grates it, to the pseudo-rationality of the supposed absolute 
point of view ? 

I myself believe that this is the real way to keep ration- 
ality in the world, and that the traditional rationalism has been 
facing in the wrong direction. 

In a later article on Professor Bergson, I shall summarise 
his criticism of the intellectualist type of rationalism. Mean- 
while, let me say that any unprejudiced look at our finite 
experiences reveals their continuity. The sense-world is not 
disintegrate, as Hegel and ordinary rationalism accuse it of 
being. Its parts, run into one another, are thus " their own 
others " in the only sense that that preposterously paradoxical 
expression can be made to bear. The cuts we think of as 
separating them are cuts made by ourselves. In short, if we 
only make our empiricism radical enough, it triumphs over all 
its foes. 

WILLIAM JAMES. 



INFALLIBILITY AND TOLERATION, 
F. C. S. SCHILLER. 

A DETACHED spectator of the follies of mankind could not but 
be profoundly impressed by the widespread interest which has 
been aroused throughout the world by the Pope's Encyclical 
against what is called Modernism. In many quarters the 
Papal condemnation is regarded as a sort of Congo atrocity in 
the spiritual world. But no reason is given why Protestants 
and Agnostics, Jews and Infidels, should interfere, even in 
thought, with the way in which internal discipline is adminis- 
tered in a Church which has always proclaimed its resolution 
to prescribe with authority and to enforce unquestioning 
obedience. Why should sympathy be lavished on persons who 
are oppressed because they refuse to liberate themselves by 
leaving an institution which excommunicates them ? In these 
days when no Church is strong enough to persecute effectively, 
and it has become quite an arguable position that the best way 
of furthering the spiritual development of mankind would be to 
break up all ecclesiastical institutions, why should Roman ways 
of enforcing discipline be denounced with indignation ? Why 
should not those who do not relish them be left to make their 
choice between submission and departure? They have been 
surreptitiously trying to combine the advantages of an ancient 
and highly picturesque community with those of an unrestricted 
freedom of individual thought ; they have been detected and 
sharply called to order. Why then should they be pitied and 
paradoxically helped from outside to stay inside by people who 
would gladly welcome them if they would come out ? 

76 



INFALLIBILITY AND TOLERATION 77 

In other quarters the Pope's procedure meets with strong 
approval, and rationalist philosophers may be heard condemn- 
ing Modernism as fervently as Pragmatism. The perplexities 
of the controversy, moreover, are only deepened when one 
observes how curiously vague and general are the Modernist's 
replies to the Papal accusations. It is all very well to denounce 
the obscurantism of the Vatican and to prophesy the disastrous 
failure of the Papal policy ; but it would have been more to 
the purpose to show how any other course would have been 
consistent with Papal authority. 

Thus the whole situation forcibly suggests a suspicion that 
the facts are not fully put before the public. Modernism is 
clearly suspected of being something far more dangerous and 
subversive than the Pope's examples prove ; and both its allies 
and its enemies appear to think that there is more at issue 
than merely the domestic question of what latitude of thought 
the Roman Church can tolerate. 

A belief that this is truly so, that this suspicion is amply 
justified, that the issue is really one of vital importance to the 
whole human race, and that this can be, and ought to be, made 
clear, is the raison d'etre of this article. 

What is really at stake and what really arouses so much 
interest is the claim to infallibility and the right to persecute 
on the one side, and the freedom of thought and the duty of 
toleration on the other. This it is that evokes so much feeling 
on both sides, when it is (more or less clearly) perceived ; and 
rightly, for the question is plainly one of universal import. It 
has not yet, however, been explained that the decision of this 
question does not rest with popes and theologians, but with 
philosophers and scientists ; for it depends ultimately on the 
view that is taken of Truth. 

Very few men understand the nature of infallibility. 
Nearly all, for example, would scout the idea that we may 
all be infallible, even the silliest of us, if we will only equip 
ourselves with a suitable view of Truth. In non-Catholic 
countries it is commonly supposed that the infallibility of the 



78 THE HIBBERT JOURNAL 

Pope is the acme of theological extravagance, and that the 
Vatican Council of 1870 irretrievably stultified Romanism for 
ever in the eyes of reason by its enunciation of this monstrous 
dogma. In point of fact, infallibility is an essential postulate 
implicit in all rationalistic philosophy, and the dogma of 
the Roman Church is merely the religious formulation of a 
belief which it shares with nearly all its critics. The infalli- 
bility of the Pope differs from that of the philosopher and the 
common man only in being relatively reasonable and couched 
in singularly guarded and moderate terms. For the Pope, 
when he claims to be infallible, does not believe himself to be 
infallible on all and sundry subjects, but only when speaking 
on matters of religious faith, and that solemnly and in his 
capacity as head of an infallible Church. Whereas the 
common man claims infallibility for every thought that may 
chance to come into his head at any time, whether or not it 
agrees with what he said a moment ago. He attributes, more- 
over, to every one else a similar endowment with infallibility, 
regardless of the consequences. 

It is true, no doubt, that the man in the street is unaware 
of the monstrous claim he makes. But this does not alter the 
facts that both he and the Pope believe themselves to hold the 
same theory of Truth, and that this theory implies a claim 
to infallibility. The sole difference is that whereas the Pope 
draws its consequences consistently, cautiously, and with 
moderation, the man in the street does so inconsistently, 
wildly, and extravagantly. And then the latter turns upon 
the former and roundly accuses him of demanding what is 
repugnant to reason I 

Yet the Pope and the man in the street both believe in the 
existence of absolute truth. Both also believe in their own 
capacity to enunciate it. But an absolute truth is one which 
could not under any circumstances become false. Whoever 
enunciates it, therefore, could not (so far) possibly be wrong. 
But what is this but to claim infallibility ? 

As ordinarily assumed, however, this claim is wildly absurd. 



INFALLIBILITY AND TOLERATION 79 

For when men fail to agree in enunciating absolute truths, each 
has as good a right to think himself infallible as the other. 
Every man, therefore, who in good faith makes a statement 
he believes to be true, and believes that truth is absolute, must 
claim infallible truth for his statement, and infallibility pro tanto 
for himself its maker. He becomes a little pope in posse in his 
own eyes. And he must insist on enforcing his rights. All 
must agree with him. The facts that his pronouncements do 
not meet with universal acceptance, and indeed that no two 
men ever quite agree, cannot affect the theoretic validity of his 
claim. Nor can it be impugned by the fact that others put 
forward conflicting claims with equal assurance. Each must 
abide by his own vision of absolute truth. Whoever does not 
see the same as he does must be either a fool or a knave: 
a fool if he cannot see it, a knave if he will not admit that he 
sees it. He must be made to see it, therefore, by fair means 
or foul. The social consequences may be imagined. There 
must be war unceasing and unsparing upon earth, until one 
and the same Truth, immutable, infallible, and absolute, is 
established upon it, and is seen and accepted by all without 
exception. Thus persecution becomes a duty and tolerance 
a crime. 

Common Sense, of course, would be the first to shrink with 
horror from the consequences of its own doctrine. For, un- 
like philosophy, it will never press logic to absurdity. It will 
decline, therefore, to take the claim to infallibility with such 
tragic earnestness in practice. It will much prefer to point 
out that while no doubt it is imperative to believe that absolute 
truth exists, it would be decidedly presumptuous to suppose 
that any one hnd got it. In fact there is no very urgent 
necessity to regard absolute truth as anything but an ideal. 
In practice no one can really work with it. Not only does it 
lead to endless quarrels when different men all claim to be 
absolutely right, but even the same man entangles himself by 
enunciating incompatible truths with equal absoluteness at 
different times. And so it will finally suggest that perhaps 



80 THE HIBBERT JOURNAL 

this inconvenient infallibility had better be dropped, and even 
smile approval on a paradoxical philosopher who, perceiving 
the awkwardness of the situation, comes forward with proposals 
to attenuate its virulence by contending that though every 
judgment any one makes is necessarily infallible for the time 
being, yet there is nothing in this to prevent any one from 
superseding and annulling his infallible judgment by another 
equally infallible, and as shortlived, the moment after. 1 

It is clear, however, that reluctance to follow out the 
logical consequences of an unpalatable doctrine is not strictly 
the right way to atone for its initial ferocity. It is far more 
consistent to interpret absolute truth absolutistically than to 
draw its fangs in such a lax and easy-going democratic way. 
If, we should argue, absolute truth exists, it is clear that the 
common man has not got it. But some one must have it, 
else it would not exist, and then there would be no truth at 
all. Even if it is among the prerogatives of deity, it is reason- 
able to suppose that it has been deposited with some human 
representative. Let us search the world, therefore, for one 
whom we can regard as such a depositary of absolute truth, 
and submit to his authority. And whom shall we find to 
satisfy these conditions better than the Pope ? His infallibility 
is infinitely more credible than that of the man in the street. 

Such a train of thought must surely appeal very power- 
fully to all who feel a spiritual craving to submit themselves 
to authority, who long to shuffle off the responsibility for their 
acts, and to find some one who will guide and direct them. 
And their name is legion. If, therefore, there were no Pope, 
he would have to be invented for such souls. His Holiness 
need not fear that his faithful will desert him. There is no 
reason to think that the anima naturaliter Vaticana is 
becoming extinct. He must, however, eschew the restriction 
of his claim to faith and morals. The absolutistic view of 
truth logically demands that truth be fully unified. A 

1 Such is actually the purport of Mr F. H. Bradley 's doctrine of the 
infallibility of the last judgment (cf. Mind, N.S., No. 66). 



INFALLIBILITY AND TOLERATION 81 

plurality of authority implies a plurality of truth ; and this 
is inadmissible. The Pope, therefore, must be the infallible 
authority in art, politics, and science, as well as in religion. 
There is, moreover, a practical reason for this arrangement. 
If there is no single infallibility to cover the whole realm of 
thought, if there are a number of authorities all claiming to 
speak infallibly in the name of their respective sciences, it is 
impossible to avoid conflicts and collisions between them ; and 
this must discredit, weaken, and perhaps destroy, the whole 
principle of authority as such. 

Before, however, this unification of authorities is finally 
established, it is easy to predict that a prolonged period of 
painful contention must ensue. The world at present contains 
a great number of conflicting authorities, of which it is by no 
means clear that the Roman Church is the strongest and best 
fitted to survive ; it contains also many recalcitrants against 
all authority, and an appreciable number of philosophers who, 
though they insist on the absolute authority of reason, will 
admit no reason but their own. It seems improbable, there- 
fore, that this doctrine of the infallibility of those who speak 
in the name of absolute truth will make for social peace and 
quiet. For all parties are in duty bound by their allegiance 
to absolute truth to wage war unflinchingly upon all views 
but their own, and wherever they can to oppress, suppress, and 
persecute by all means in their power. History, therefore, 
will repeat itself. Its blood-stained pages tell too eloquently 
how thoroughly man has tried to live up to his obligations, 
and the psychological intolerance which has become so natural 
in man shows how deeply the corollaries of his belief in the 
absoluteness of truth have sunk into his soul. 

Is it not possible, therefore, to pay too high a price even 
for absolute truth ? In modern times there is probably a 
growing number of men to whom the price to be paid will 
seem excessive and such consequences seem repulsive. It is 
time, therefore, that for their benefit we considered the 
alternative which, apprehended with various degrees of clear- 
VOL. VII. No. 1. 6 



82 THE HIBBERT JOURNAL 

ness, underlies the modern revolt against mere authority, 
the Modernist attitude towards religion, and the extensive 
sympathy therewith. 

Let us return to the practical but illogical compromise 
whereby Common Sense robbed the intolerant belief in the 
absoluteness of Truth of all its terrors. A single step beyond 
it in the same direction will take us into a new world, a very 
paradise of freedom. Common Sense was willing to admit 
that in point of fact absolute truth was not in any man's 
possession, and that, however confident men might feel about 
the truth they had, they were often, if not always, victims of 
an illusion, and might as well allow for this possibility in their 
behaviour towards their fellows. For its immediate purpose of 
mitigating the acerbity of absolutist theory and securing social 
intercourse this compromise is plainly sufficient. It works 
well enough in practice. Theoretically, however, it is more 
than dubious. It is most unpleasantly and directly suggestive 
of sceptical inferences. If it is held that most men most of 
the time are deluded when they suppose themselves to be 
enunciating absolute truth, if it is impossible to show that any 
one ever succeeds in enunciating such a thing, what does the 
doctrine of absolute truth become but a subtle and insidious 
means of discrediting all human truths ? Is not this the 
explanation of that paradox of philosophic history, viz. that 
consistent rationalism always in the end collapses into 
scepticism ? 

It is clear then that absolute truth is not really an operative 
idea. It is an ideal that ever recedes into the distance when 
we try to grasp it. Men are not really infallible, and cannot 
treat each other as such. The truths they actually deal in are 
not absolute. The common sense belief that they are is really 
an ill-considered prejudice. 

Let us candidly confess, therefore, that not only do we not 
have absolute truth, but that what we have is enough to con- 
tent us. Let us boldly say that we do not need absolute 
truth, that it is a superfluity and an encumbrance, and get rid 



INFALLIBILITY AND TOLERATION 88 

of it in theory as well as in practice. Let us frame a new 
conception of Truth. Let us strip her aegis of the rigours 
and terrors that compelled reluctant assent but rendered her 
unapproachable in her warlike armour, and teach her to dwell 
peaceably in our midst, to speak our language, and to interest 
herself in our life. Let us, in a word, humanise Truth, instead 
of idolising her as a goddess who is more than half a demon. 
Let us define the true no longer as what is cogent and com- 
pulsory and irresistible, but as what is attractive and valuable 
and satisfying. Let Truth mean whatever can satisfy our 
cognitive cravings, whatever can answer a logical problem. 
And let it mean our best answer for the time being. Let 
it be conceived, that is, as essentially progressive and 
improvable, and therefore as superseded by new truth and 
turning into error so soon as something superior to the old 
dawns upon any human soul. 

Thus Truth will no longer shine upon us from afar with the 
dim glimmer of an infinitely distant nebula. It will no longer 
dazzle us with the delusive flashes of a will-o'-the-wisp that 
is really " error." It will be a torch kindled by human will 
and wielded by human hands (or rather a succession of such 
torches), always lighting the way for man as he passes onwards. 
The objects it illumines will come into its sphere as man's 
life requires them ; they will drop back into the limbo of the 
useless, out of which they were drawn, as they are used up or 
improved upon. 

From such a reconstitution of the idea of Truth it is clear 
that man must gain immensely. And, apart from the glamour 
of words, even Truth will lose nothing. Even its absoluteness 
is not lost. It is only avowed to be what it is an ideal, the 
culmination of Truth's working value, the perfect satisfaction 
of every cognitive ambition. As such it may still yield the 
remote and emotional consolation which was all it could 
afford before, when the illusions of verbiage were purged 
away. The human truth which alone we have and alone we 
need, on the other hand, will be a very real and potent 



84 THE HIBBERT JOURNAL 

influence. It must enormously enlarge the liberty of thought. 
It must enormously enhance humaneness of discussion. It 
must utterly explode the foundations of dogmatism and 
intolerance. 

For nothing at first can be " true " but what can commend 
itself to some one and satisfy some spiritual need. Conversely, 
whatever can do this can claim " truth " ; it has a claim to 
be heard and tested, even though it be merely the fleeting 
inspiration of a moment. Every man has a vote in the 
making of truth ; any man's truth may be elected, any man's 
vote may decide the election. But no man has a right to 
use force ; no man has a right to impose his convictions on 
any other: superior attractiveness alone effects conversions 
in the conflict of opinions. Nor has any one a right to argue 
that because he is right every one else must be wrong : Truth 
is plural, and can adjust herself to every man's sight and point 
of view. Hence an indefinite variety of truths may be valid 
relatively to a variety of differently constituted and situated 
persons. Toleration mounts the throne left vacant by 
Infallibility. 

But what a blasphemous travesty of Truth, what a hideous 
anarchy it all must seem to absolutists, dogmatists, pedants, 
authoritarians of all sorts ! How it must seem to them to 
shiver into atoms the whole edifice of Truth and the founda- 
tions of all intellectual order ! No wonder they must support 
Rome against the inroads of such modernity ! No wonder 
they are almost speechless with horror and incoherent with 
indignation ! For the mirage of an absolute Truth in the skies 
is dissolved beyond recall, and its worshippers are left desolate. 
To them it seemed the real thing. It never was the real 
thing, and they have lost nothing but an illusion. But they 
do not, and perhaps will not, see this. All that was of 
real value remains. The terrestrial realities remain of which 
the celestial phantasmagoria was the reflexion. There re- 
mains the practical necessity of living together and agreeing 
upon the conditions of a common life. Man remains with his 



INFALLIBILITY AND TOLERATION 85 

gregarious nature, his lack of originality, his respect for tradi- 
tion, his easy acquiescence in the habitual, his dislike of in- 
novation, his preference for order and system, his eagerness to 
think the world a cosmos in short, with all the forces that 
weld society together. 

More than enough remains, therefore, for the compacting 
of our intellectual order. The "real" and "objective" be- 
comes that which it is socially convenient to recognise, in 
a rich variety of senses. " Objective truth " will be that 
which all or most can agree on. It articulates itself into 
systems of truths which are more substantial, more useful, and 
probably more durable, than the transcendent vision which 
was sacrificed. Certainly these systems are at present plural, 
not because Truth cannot be conceived as one for the plural 
truths can easily be conceived as converging towards a single 
consummation but because men do not agree. Whether 
they can agree remains to be seen ; they have every motive to 
agree, and have lost the strong stimulus they had to insist 
obstinately on their individual infallibility. But, on the other 
hand, the notion of agreement has itself become easier : men 
can agree to differ ; they can maintain all individual views 
which do not clash with those of others or lead to social dis- 
cord. In short, the existing situation will be altered only by 
the infusion of a more tolerant temper into all opinions. 

But has not all this carried us far away from the Modernist 
movement in the Church of Rome? Not at all; it has 
brought us to its core. Modernism is essentially the recogni 
tion by certain more enlightened or sensitive clerics of the 
intellectual forces which are drawing men in religion, as in 
science and philosophy, towards the humanistic conception of 
Truth which we have sketched. They have perceived at last 
what the lives of laymen have always dumbly attested, that 
religion is not primarily a matter of theology but of religious 
experience, and nowhere reducible to a rigid chain of incon- 
trovertible syllogisms. They have therefore abandoned the 
intellectualistic travesties of religion, which kill its spirit to 



86 THE HIBBERT JOURNAL 

embalm its letter, and offer long strings of pseudo-rational 
propositions as a satisfaction to a reason which easily detects 
their imposture and is itself seeking for something more 
nutritious than pure intellect. But such dogmas, as M. Leroy 
has shown, 1 are utter failures as purely intellectual propositions : 
they neither can nor do compel assent; as such, they can 
neither be defended nor even made to mean anything that 
matters. So to understand the meaning of dogmas and the 
nature of religious beliefs is a fatal mistake. They are not 
really intellectual products at all, and therefore cannot be 
attacked (or defended) as such. No religion really rests on 
the impersonal support of pure reason ; nor can it be kept 
from moving with the times by chains of rusty syllogisms. 
For the truth is that dogmas are essentially secondary ex- 
pressions of the vital value of a religion, the by-products of a 
spiritual life that was never nourished on pure intellect. They 
are, as it were, the lifeless fossils of a living faith, and remain 
unmeaning marvels unless they are re-enveloped in the life 
which grew them. That life, moreover, is primarily an indi- 
vidual attitude of soul: however closely it is wrapped in a 
spiritual environment, each soul must nourish itself and grow 
in its own congenial fashion. 

The chief paradox of the situation is that these facts of 
the spiritual life should have been so intensely perceived in 
the Roman Church. For at first sight they look such a 
supreme vindication of Protestantism, such a sanctioning by 
psychologic science of the evangelical or mystic. But it 
must never be forgotten that, like all science, psychology is 
catholic and impartial. Every religion may be vindicated by 
the psychologic tests in so far as it is genuine, i.e. really 
nourishes the spiritual life. It speaks well for the intelligence 
of the Catholic Modernists that they should have discovered 
this. But they discovered also that the idea of a Church, 
of an historical association with a corporate confidence in the 
truth of its position, has very great religious value. There 

1 Dogme el Critique. 



INFALLIBILITY AND TOLERATION 87 

is little doubt that the Roman Church could flourish exceed- 
ingly on Modernist lines. 

But will it prefer to do so ? It is very hard to say. It 
must be a very hard question to decide for the astute directors 
of Papal policy. Superficially, no doubt, the present indica- 
tions are that this bold and novel policy will not be adopted, 
that Modernism will be crushed, that Medievalism will prevail, 
and that a mechanical uniformity will be enforced, even at 
the cost of schism. But appearances are nowhere more de- 
ceptive than in matters ecclesiastical, and history does not 
confirm the view that the Pope always knows his own business 
best. It is quite conceivable that in due course, when the 
more cautious sympathisers with modern thought have risen 
by dint of years to the higher posts in the hierarchy, and the 
pressure of circumstances has convinced the less fanatical 
conservatives that something must be done, some successor of 
Pius X. will be moved to issue another Encyclical which, 
after splitting a vast number of hairs to prove that what is 
now sanctioned is not identical with what was condemned 
before, will define the sense in which a Modernist attitude 
may be permitted, and concede the substance of what has 
lately been denied. 

There would be both psychological and historical warrant 
for this prophecy. The opposition to any novelty of thought 
is always largely a matter of individual psychology. The 
human mind becomes less open to new impressions as it 
grows older, and in all institutions the high authorities are 
always old, and often stupidly conservative. Progressiveness 
and open-mindedness are tender plants which must be care- 
fully cultivated, and often forced. Historical analogy points 
to the same conclusion. The making of dogmas usually ends 
by making orthodoxy a razor-edge between two opposite 
heresies which have been successively condemned. It is 
formulated so as to conceal the facts that when new ideas 
arose the old men in authority conservatively condemned 
them, and that when, nevertheless, they triumphed, words 



88 THE HIBBERT JOURNAL 

had to be found that would not break too abruptly with the 
old traditions. 

Such, however, are what may be regarded as the normal 
psychological and political obstacles to the progress of human 
thought, and they are in no wise peculiar to the Roman 
Church. What complicates the situation in her case is that 
there are other serious objections to innovation which render 
her the least likely of the Churches to modernise her basis. 
By so doing she could probably purchase an ignoble peace and 
enduring prosperity, but only at the cost of two things 
which have hitherto been very dear to her. In the first place, 
she would have to renounce the right to persecute. Truly a 
trivial matter this, it may be thought, seeing that it cannot 
nowadays be exercised. But it is one thing to suspend it in 
practice and for prudential reasons, and quite another to give 
it up in theory and on principle. Principles which cannot be 
carried into practice often grow all the dearer for their pathetic 
impotence, as is proved by intellectualist philosophies. More- 
over, to renounce this right would not only break with much 
historical tradition, but would also sacrifice the ambition of 
recovering the lost power of the Church. 

Secondly, the right of making dogmas (of the old quasi- 
rational sort) would have to be abandoned. The Church 
would have to follow the example set by science and, more 
recently, by philosophy. Science for some time past has been 
too busy and too rapidly progressive to find it worth while 
to formulate into fixed dogmas her working theories, which, 
in the words of Professor J. J. Thomson, form " a policy and 
not a creed." It has grown accustomed to use them merely 
for what they are worth, and so long as they are worth it. In 
philosophy the discovery of the proper attitude towards dogmas 
has been of slower growth, though philosophic Humanism is 
quite clear as to their value. 

But religion hitherto has always stood for the eternal fixity 
of dogma, once it has been defined. In most Churches, indeed, 
this power of making dogma has long been in abeyance. They 



INFALLIBILITY AND TOLERATION 89 

have been too tightly wedged into an antiquated creed which 
none of its members could construe literally, or tied to some 
paralysing political concordat, or too loosely organised to act 
corporately. But this inability has usually been construed as 
a disability, and the power of making dogma has seemed a 
mark of the superior progressiveness and unity of Rome. 
Acceptance of Modernism, however, would mean the sacrifice 
of this flattering prerogative. 

Here again, however, it might be argued that the apparent 
loss would be a real gain. For the making of dogma is always 
a perilous business. In making dogmas it is hard to avoid 
making heretics. And the more heretics a Church makes 
the less " catholic " does it become. It is extraordinary what 
losses the Roman Church has incurred by her indulgence in 
the dogma-making instinct. Was a disagreement about the 
calculating of that most inconveniently migratory festival, 
Easter, worth the bisection and permanent weakening of 
Christendom ? Was the defining of the Trinity and the 
Incarnation worth the loss of Africa and Asia to Moham- 
medanism, and the destruction of the best of the Northerners, 
the Arian Goths? The world in all probability would long 
ago have been Christian, the Roman Church would have been 
truly " catholic," but for the disastrous practice of defining 
dogmas, and the intolerance of which this was the cause and 
the effect. Will history repeat itself ? Will dogma be made 
though the angels weep? Will Rome decide in accordance 
with her past traditions, fiat dogma, mat coeluml It will be 
immensely hard to break with them, and the traditional policy 
will necessarily have immense strength. But who can say ? 
Not even Pius X. But the situation is very interesting, though 
decidedly more comfortable for those who can watch from 
without the distractions of an embarrassed Church. 

F. C. S. SCHILLER. 

CORPUS CHRISTI COLLEGE, OXFORD. 



A NEGLECTED ARGUMENT FOR 
THE REALITY OF GOD. 

C. S. PE1RCE. 

I. 

THE word " God," so " capitalised " (as we Americans say), is 
tlie definable proper name, signifying Ens necessarium ; in my 
belief Really creator of all three Universes of Experience. 

Some words shall herein be capitalised when used, not as 
vernacular, but as terms defined. Thus an " idea " is the 
substance of an actual unitary thought or fancy ; but " Idea," 
nearer Plato's idea of tSe'a, denotes anything whose Being con- 
sists in its mere capacity for getting fully represented, regardless 
of any person's faculty or impotence to represent it. 

" Real " is a word invented in the thirteenth century to 
signify having Properties, i.e. characters sufficing to identify 
their subject, and possessing these whether they be anywise 
attributed to it by any single man or group of men, or not. 
Thus, the substance of a dream is not Real, since it was such 
as it was, merely in that a dreamer so dreamed it ; but the fact 
of the dream is Real, if it was dreamed ; since if so, its date, 
the name of the dreamer, etc., make up a set of circumstances 
sufficient to distinguish it from all other events ; and these 
belong to it, i.e. would be true if predicated of it, whether 
A, B, or C Actually ascertains them or not. The " Actual " 
is that which is met with in the past, present, or future. 

An " Experience " is a brutally produced conscious effect 
that contributes to a habit, self-controlled, yet so satisfying, on 



THE REALITY OF GOD 91 

deliberation, as to be destructible by no positive exercise of 
internal vigour. I use the word " self-controlled " for " con- 
trolled by the thinker's self," and not for "uncontrolled" 
except in its own spontaneous, i.e. automatic, self-development, 
as Professor J. M. Baldwin uses the word. Take for illustration 
the sensation undergone by a child that puts its forefinger into a 
flame with the acquisition of a habit of keeping all its members 
out of all flames. A compulsion is " Brute," whose immediate 
efficacy nowise consists in conformity to rule or reason. 

Of the three Universes of Experience familiar to us all, 
the first comprises all mere Ideas, those airy nothings to which 
the mind of poet, pure mathematician, or another might give 
local habitation and a name within that mind. Their very 
airy-nothingness, the fact that their Being consists in mere 
capability of getting thought, not in anybody's Actually 
thinking them, saves their Reality. The second Universe is 
that of the Brute Actuality of things and facts. I am con- 
fident that their Being consists in reactions against Brute 
forces, notwithstanding objections redoubtable until they are 
closely and fairly examined. The third Universe comprises 
everything whose being consists in active power to establish 
connections between different objects, especially between 
objects in different Universes. Such is everything which is 
essentially a Sign not the mere body of the Sign, which is not 
essentially such, but, so to speak, the Sign's Soul, which has 
its Being in its power of serving as intermediary between its 
Object and a Mind. Such, too, is a living consciousness, and 
such the life, the power of growth, of a plant. Such is a living 
constitution a daily newspaper, a great fortune, a social 
" movement." 

An "Argument" is any process of thought reasonably 
tending to produce a definite belief. An " Argumentation " is 
an Argument proceeding upon definitely formulated premisses. 

If God Really be, and be benign, then, in view of the 
generally conceded truth that religion, were it but proved, 
would be a good outweighing all others, we should naturally 



92 THE HIBBERT JOURNAL 

expect that there would be some Argument for His Reality 
that should be obvious to all minds, high and low alike, that 
should earnestly strive to find the truth of the matter ; and 
further, that this Argument should present its conclusion, not 
as a proposition of metaphysical theology, but in a form directly 
applicable to the conduct of life, and full of nutrition for 
man's highest growth. What I shall refer to as the N.A. 
the Neglected Argument seems to me best to fulfil this 
condition, and I should not wonder if the majority of those 
whose own reflections have harvested belief in God must 
bless the radiance of the N. A. for that wealth. Its persuasive- 
ness is no less than extraordinary ; while it is not unknown 
to anybody. Nevertheless, of all those theologians (within my 
little range of reading) who, with commendable assiduity, 
scrape together all the sound reasons they can find or concoct 
to prove the first proposition of theology, few mention this 
one, and they most briefly. They probably share those current 
notions of logic which recognise no other Arguments than 
Argumentations. 

There is a certain agreeable occupation of mind which, 
from its having no distinctive name, I infer is not as commonly 
practised as it deserves to be ; for indulged in moderately say 
through some five to six per cent, of one's waking time, perhaps 
during a stroll it is refreshing enough more than to repay the 
expenditure. Because it involves no purpose save that of 
casting aside all serious purpose, I have sometimes been half- 
inclined to call it reverie, with some qualification ; but for a 
frame of mind so antipodal to vacancy and dreaminess such a 
designation would be too excruciating a misfit. In fact, it is 
Pure Play. Now, Play, we all know, is a lively exercise of 
one's powers. Pure Play has no rules, except this very law 
of liberty. It bloweth where it listeth. It has no purpose, 
unless recreation. The particular occupation I mean a petite 
bouchee with the Universes may take either the form of 
esthetic contemplation, or that of distant castle-building 
(whether in Spain or within one's own moral training), or 



THE REALITY OF GOD 93 

that of considering some wonder in one of the Universes, or 
some connection between two of the three, with speculation 
concerning its cause. It is this last kind I will call it 
"Musement" on the whole that I particularly recommend, 
because it will in time flower into the N.A. One who sits 
down with the purpose of becoming convinced of the truth 
of religion is plainly not inquiring in scientific singleness of 
heart, and must always suspect himself of reasoning unfairly. 
So he can never attain the entirety even of a physicist's belief 
in electrons, although this is avowedly but provisional. But 
let religious meditation be allowed to grow up spontaneously 
out of Pure Play without any breach of continuity, and the 
Muser will retain the perfect candour proper to Musement. 

If one who had determined to make trial of Musement 
as a favourite recreation were to ask me for advice, I should 
reply as follows : The dawn and the gloaming most invite 
one to Musement ; but I have found no watch of the 
nychthemeron that has not its own advantages for the pursuit. 
It begins passively enough with drinking in the impression 
of some nook in one of the three Universes. But impression 
soon passes into attentive observation, observation into 
musing, musing into a lively give-and-take of communion 
between self and self. If one's observations and reflections 
are allowed to specialise themselves too much, the Play will 
be converted into scientific study ; and that cannot be pursued 
in odd half-hours. 

I should add: adhere to the one ordinance of Play, the 
law of liberty. I can testify that the last half century, at 
least, has never lacked tribes of Sir Oracles, colporting 
brocards to bar off one or another roadway of inquiry ; and 
a Rabelais would be needed to bring out all the fun that has 
been packed in their airs of infallibility. Auguste Comte, 
notwithstanding his having apparently produced some unques- 
tionably genuine thinking, was long the chief of such a band. 
The vogue of each particular maxim of theirs was necessarily 
brief. For what distinction can be gained by repeating saws 



94 THE HIBBERT JOURNAL 

heard from all mouths ? No bygone fashion seems more 
grotesque than a panache of obsolete wisdom. I remember 
the days when a pronouncement all the rage was that no 
science must borrow the methods of another ; the geologist 
must not use a microscope, nor the astronomer a spectro- 
scope. Optics must not meddle with electricity, nor logic 
with algebra. But twenty years later, if you aspired to pass 
for a commanding intellect, you would have to pull a long 
face and declare that " It is not the business of science to 
search for origins." This maxim was a masterpiece, since 
no timid soul, in dread of being thought naive, would dare 
inquire what " origins " were, albeit the secret confessor within 
his breast compelled the awful self-acknowledgment of his 
having no idea into what else than " origins " of phenomena 
(in some sense of that indefinite word) man can inquire. 
That human reason can comprehend some causes is past 
denial, and once we are forced to recognise a given element 
in experience, it is reasonable to await positive evidence before 
we complicate our acknowledgment with qualifications. 
Otherwise, why venture beyond direct observation? Illus- 
trations of this principle abound in physical science. Since, 
then, it is certain that man is able to understand the laws 
and the causes of some phenomena, it is reasonable to assume, 
in regard to any given problem, that it would get rightly 
solved by man, if a sufficiency of time and attention were 
devoted to it. Moreover, those problems that at first blush 
appear utterly insoluble receive, in that very circumstance, as 
Edgar Poe remarked in his The Murders in the Rue Morgue, 
their smoothly-fitting keys. This particularly adapts them to 
the Play of Musement. 

Forty or fifty minutes of vigorous and unslackened analytic 
thought bestowed upon one of them usually suffices to educe 
from it all there is to educe, its general solution. There is 
no kind of reasoning that I should wish to discourage in 
Musement ; and I should lament to find anybody confining 
it to a method of such moderate fertility as logical analysis. 



THE REALITY OF GOD 95 

Only, the Player should bear in mind that the higher weapons 
in the arsenal of thought are not play -things but edge-tools. 
In any mere Play they can be used by way of exercise alone ; 
while logical analysis can be put to its full efficiency in 
Musement. So, continuing the counsels that had been asked 
of me, I should say, " Enter your skiff of Musement, push 
off into the lake of thought, and leave the breath of heaven 
to swell your sail. With your eyes open, awake to what is 
about or within you, and open conversation with yourself; 
for such is all meditation." It is, however, not a conversation 
in words alone, but is illustrated, like a lecture, with diagrams 
and with experiments. 

Different people have such wonderfully different ways of 
thinking, that it would be far beyond my competence to say 
what courses Musements might not take ; but a brain endowed 
with automatic control, as man's indirectly is, is so naturally 
and rightly interested in its own faculties that some psycho- 
logical and semi-psychological questions would doubtless get 
touched ; such, in the latter class, as this : Darwinians, with 
truly surprising ingenuity, have concocted, and with still more 
astonishing confidence have accepted as proved, one explana- 
tion for the diverse and delicate beauties of flowers, another 
for those of butterflies, and so on ; but why is all nature the 
forms of trees, the compositions of sunsets suffused with such 
beauties throughout, and not nature only, but the other two 
Universes as well ? Among more purely psychological ques- 
tions, the nature of pleasure and pain will be likely to attract 
attention. Are they mere qualities of feeling, or are they 
rather motor instincts attracting us to some feelings and 
repelling others ? Have pleasure and pain the same sort of 
constitution, or are they contrasted in this respect, pleasure 
arising upon the formation or strengthening of an association 
by resemblance, and pain upon the weakening or disruption of 
such a habit or conception ? 

Psychological speculations will naturally lead on to musings 
upon metaphysical problems proper, good exercise for a mind 



96 THE HIBBERT JOURNAL 

with a turn for exact thought. It is here that one finds those 
questions that at first seem to offer no handle for reason's 
clutch, but which readily yield to logical analysis. But 
problems of metaphysics will inevitably present themselves 
that logical analysis will not suffice to solve. Some of the 
best will be motived by a desire to comprehend universe-wide 
aggregates of unformulated but partly experienced phenomena. 
I would suggest that the Muser be not too impatient to 
analyse these, lest some significant ingredient be lost in the 
process ; but that he begin by pondering them from every 
point of view, until he seems to read some truth beneath the 
phenomena. 

At this point a trained mind will demand that an exam- 
ination be made of the truth of the interpretation ; and 
the first step in such examination must be a logical analysis 
of the theory. But strict examination would be a task a 
little too serious for the Musement of hour-fractions, and if 
it is postponed there will be ample remuneration even in the 
suggestions that there is not time to examine ; especially since 
a few of them will appeal to reason as all but certain. 

Let the Muser, for example, after well appreciating, in its 
breadth and depth, the unspeakable variety of each Universe, 
turn to those phenomena that are of the nature of homogenei- 
ties of connectedness in each ; and what a spectacle will unroll 
itself ! As a mere hint of them 1 may point out that every 
small part of space, however remote, is bounded by just such 
neighbouring parts as every other, without a single exception 
throughout immensity. The matter of Nature is in every star 
of the same elementary kinds, and (except for variations of 
circumstance) what is more wonderful still, throughout the 
whole visible universe, about the same proportions of the 
different chemical elements prevail. Though the mere cata- 
logue of known carbon-compounds alone would fill an 
unwieldy volume, and perhaps, if the truth were known, the 
number of amido-acids alone is greater, yet it is unlikely that 
there are in all more than about 600 elements, of which 500 



THE REALITY OF GOD 97 

dart through space too swiftly to be held down by the earth's 
gravitation, coronium being the slowest-moving of these. This 
small number bespeaks comparative simplicity of structure. 
Yet no mathematician but will confess the present hopeless- 
ness of attempting to comprehend the constitution of the 
hydrogen-atom, the simplest of the elements that can be 
held to earth. 

From speculations on the homogeneities of each Universe, 
the Muser will naturally pass to the consideration of homo- 
geneities and connections between two different Universes, or 
all three. Especially in them all we find one type of occur- 
rence, that of growth, itself consisting in the homogeneities of 
small parts. This is evident in the growth of motion into 
displacement, and the growth of force into motion. In growth, 
too, we find that the three Universes conspire ; and a universal 
feature of it is provision for later stages in earlier ones. This 
is a specimen of certain lines of reflection which will inevitably 
suggest the hypothesis of God's Reality. It is not that such 
phenomena might not be capable of being accounted for, in 
one sense, by the action of chance with the smallest conceivable 
dose of a higher element ; for if by God be meant the Ens 
necessarium, that very hypothesis requires that such should be 
the case. But the point is that that sort of explanation leaves 
a mental explanation just as needful as before. Tell me, upon 
sufficient authority, that all cerebration depends upon move- 
ments of neurites that strictly obey certain physical laws, and 
that thus all expressions of thought, both external and internal, 
receive a physical explanation, and I shall be ready to believe 
you. But if you go on to say that this explodes the theory 
that my neighbour and myself are governed by reason, and are 
thinking beings, I must frankly say that it will not give me a 
high opinion of your intelligence. But however that may be, 
in the Pure Play of Musement the idea of God's Reality will 
be sure sooner or later to be found an attractive fancy, which 
the Muser will develop in various ways. The more he ponders 

it, the more it will find response in every part of his mind, for 
VOL. VII. No. 1. 7 



98 THE HIBBERT JOURNAL 

its beauty, for its supplying an ideal of life, and for its 
thoroughly satisfactory explanation of his whole threefold 

environment. 

II. 

The hypothesis of God is a peculiar one, in that it supposes 
an infinitely incomprehensible object, although every hypothesis, 
as such, supposes its object to be truly conceived in the 
hypothesis. This leaves the hypothesis but one way of under- 
standing itself; namely, as vague yet as true so far as it is 
definite, and as continually tending to define itself more and 
more, and without limit. The hypothesis, being thus itself 
inevitably subject to the law of growth, appears in its vague- 
ness to represent God as so, albeit this is directly contradicted 
in the hypothesis from its very first phase. But this apparent 
attribution of growth to God, since it is ineradicable from the 
hypothesis, cannot, according to the hypothesis, be flatly false. 
Its implications concerning the Universes will be maintained 
in the hypothesis, while its implications concerning God will 
be partly disavowed, and yet held to be less false than their 
denial would be. Thus the hypothesis will lead to our 
thinking of features of each Universe as purposed ; and this 
will stand or fall with the hypothesis. Yet a purpose essen- 
tially involves growth, and so cannot be attributed to God. 
Still it will, according to the hypothesis, be less false to speak 
so than to represent God as purposeless. 

Assured as I am from my own personal experience that 
every man capable of so controlling his attention as to perform 
a little exact thinking will, if he examines Zeno's argument 
about Achilles and the tortoise, come to think, as I do, that it 
is nothing but a contemptible catch, I do not think that I 
either am or ought to be less assured, from what I know of 
the effects of Musement on myself and others, that any normal 
man who considers the three Universes in the light of the 
hypothesis of God's Reality, and pursues that line of reflection 
in scientific singleness of heart, will come to be stirred to the 
depths of his nature by the beauty of the idea and by its 



THE REALITY OF GOD 99 

august practicality, even to the point of earnestly loving and 
adoring his strictly hypothetical God, and to that of desiring 
above all things to shape the whole conduct of life and all the 
springs of action into conformity with that hypothesis. Now 
to be deliberately and thoroughly prepared to shape one's 
conduct into conformity with a proposition is neither more 
nor less than the state of mind called Believing that proposition, 
however long the conscious classification of it under that head 

be postponed. 

III. 

There is my poor sketch of the Neglected Argument, 
greatly cut down to bring it within the limits assigned to 
this article. Next should come the discussion of its logicality ; 
but nothing readable at a sitting could possibly bring home 
to readers my full proof of the principal points of such an 
examination. I can only hope to make the residue of this 
paper a sort of table of contents, from which some may 
possibly guess what I have to say ; or to lay down a series of 
plausible points through which the reader will have to con- 
struct the continuous line of reasoning for himself. In my 
own mind the proof is elaborated, and I am exerting my 
energies to getting it submitted to public censure. My 
present abstract will divide itself into three unequal parts. 
The first shall give the headings of the different steps of 
every well-conducted and complete inquiry, without noticing 
possible divergencies from the norm. I shall have to mention 
some steps which have nothing to do with the Neglected 
Argument in order to show that they add no jot nor tittle 
to the truth which is invariably brought just as the Neglected 
Argument brings it. The second part shall very briefly state, 
without argument (for which there is no room), just wherein 
lies the logical validity of the reasoning characteristic of each 
of the main stages of inquiry. The third part shall indicate 
the place of the Neglected Argument in a complete inquiry 
into the Reality of God, and shall show how well it would 
fill that place, and what its logical value is supposing the 



100 THE HIBBERT JOURNAL 

inquiry to be limited to this ; and I shall add a few words to 
show how it might be supplemented. 

Every inquiry whatsoever takes its rise in the observation, 
in one or another of the three Universes, of some surprising 
phenomenon, some experience which either disappoints an 
expectation, or breaks in upon some habit of expectation of 
the inquisiturus ; and each apparent exception to this rule only 
confirms it. There are obvious distinctions between the 
objects of surprise in different cases ; but throughout this 
slight sketch of inquiry such details will be unnoticed, 
especially since it is upon such that the logic-books descant. 
The inquiry begins with pondering these phenomena in all 
their aspects, in the search of some point of view whence the 
wonder shall be resolved. At length a conjecture arises that 
furnishes a possible Explanation, by which I mean a syllogism 
exhibiting the surprising fact as necessarily consequent upon 
the circumstances of its occurrence together with the truth of 
the credible conjecture, as premisses. On account of this 
Explanation, the inquirer is led to regard his conjecture, or 
hypothesis, with favour. As I phrase it, he provisionally holds 
it to be " Plausible " ; this acceptance ranges in different 
cases and reasonably so from a mere expression of it in the 
interrogative mood, as a question meriting attention and reply, 
up through all appraisals of Plausibility, to uncontrollable 
inclination to believe. The whole series of mental perform- 
ances between the notice of the wonderful phenomenon 
and the acceptance of the hypothesis, during which the 
usually docile understanding seems to hold the bit between 
its teeth and to have us at its mercy the search for pertinent 
circumstances and the laying hold of them, sometimes without 
our cognisance, the scrutiny of them, the dark labouring, the 
bursting out of the startling conjecture, the remarking of its 
smooth fitting to the anomaly, as it is turned back and forth 
like a key in a lock, and the final estimation of its Plausibility, 
I reckon as composing the First Stage of Inquiry. Its 
characteristic formula of reasoning I term Retroduction, i.e. 



THE REALITY OF GOD 101 

reasoning from consequent to antecedent. In one respect 
the designation seems inappropriate; for in most instances 
where conjecture mounts the high peaks of Plausibility and 
is really most worthy of confidence the inquirer is unable 
definitely to formulate just what the explained wonder is ; or 
can only do so in the light of the hypothesis. In short, it is 
a form of Argument rather than of Argumentation. 

Retroduction does not afford security. The hypothesis 
must be tested. 

This testing, to be logically valid, must honestly start, 
not as Retroduction starts, with scrutiny of the phenomena, 
but with examination of the hypothesis, and a muster of all 
sorts of conditional experiential consequences which would 
follow from its truth. This constitutes the Second Stage of 
Inquiry. For its characteristic form of reasoning our language 
has, for two centuries, been happily provided with the name 
Deduction. 

Deduction has two parts. For its first step must be by 
logical analysis to Explicate the hypothesis, i.e. to render it 
as perfectly distinct as possible. This process, like Retroduc- 
tion, is Argument that is not Argumentation. But unlike 
Retroduction, it cannot go wrong from lack of experience, but 
so long as it proceeds rightly must reach a true conclusion. 
Explication is followed by Demonstration, or Deductive 
Argumentation. Its procedure is best learned from Book I. 
of Euclid's Elements, a masterpiece which in real insight is far 
superior to Aristotle's Analytics-, and its numerous fallacies 
render it all the more instructive to a close student. It invari- 
ably requires something of the nature of a diagram ; that is, an 
" Icon," or Sign that represents its Object in resembling it. It 
usually, too, needs " Indices," or Signs that represent their 
Objects by being actually connected with them. But it is 
mainly composed of " Symbols," or Signs that represent their 
Objects essentially because they will be so interpreted. Demon- 
stration should be Corollarial when it can. An accurate 
definition of Corollarial Demonstration would require a long 



102 THE HIBBERT JOURNAL 

explanation ; but it will suffice to say that it limits itself to 
considerations already introduced or else involved in the Ex- 
plication of its conclusion; while Theorematic Demonstration 
resorts to a more complicated process of thought. 

The purpose of Deduction, that of collecting consequents 
of the hypothesis, having been sufficiently carried out, the 
inquiry enters upon its Third Stage, that of ascertaining how 
far those consequents accord with Experience, and of judging 
accordingly whether the hypothesis is sensibly correct, or 
requires some inessential modification, or must be entirely 
rejected. Its characteristic way of reasoning is Induction. 
This stage has three parts. For it must begin with Classifica- 
tion, which is an Inductive Non-argumentational kind of 
Argument, by which general Ideas are attached to objects of 
Experience ; or rather by which the latter are subordinated to 
the former. Following this will come the testing-argumenta- 
tions, the Probations ; and the whole inquiry will be wound 
up with the Sentential part of the Third Stage, which, by 
Inductive reasonings, appraises the different Probations singly, 
then their combinations, then makes self-appraisal of these 
very appraisals themselves, and passes final judgment on the 
whole result. 

The Probations, or direct Inductive Argumentations, are 
of two kinds. The first is that which Bacon ill described as 
" inductio ilia quce procedit per enumerationem simplicem" So 
at least he has been understood. For an enumeration of 
instances is not essential to the argument that, for example, 
there are no such beings as fairies, or no such events as 
miracles. The point is that there is no well-established in- 
stance of such a thing. I call this Crude Induction. It is 
the only Induction which concludes a logically Universal 
Proposition. It is the weakest of arguments, being liable to 
be demolished in a moment, as happened toward the end of 
the eighteenth century to the opinion of the scientific world 
that no stones fall from the sky. The other kind is Gradual 
Induction, which makes a new estimate of the proportion of 



THE REALITY OF GOD 103 

truth in the hypothesis with every new instance ; and given 
any degree of error there will sometime be an estimate (or 
would be, if the probation were persisted in) which will be 
absolutely the last to be infected with so much falsity. 
Gradual Induction is either Qualitative or Quantitative, and 
the latter either depends on measurements, or on statistics, or 

on countings. 

IV. 

Concerning the question of the nature of the logical 
validity possessed by Deduction, Induction, and Retrod uction, 
which is still an arena of controversy, I shall confine myself to 
stating the opinions which I am prepared to defend by posi- 
tive proofs. The validity of Deduction was correctly, if not 
very clearly, analysed by Kant. This kind of reasoning deals 
exclusively with Pure Ideas attaching primarily to Symbols 
and derivatively to other Signs of our own creation ; and the 
fact that man has a power of Explicating his own meaning 
renders Deduction valid. Induction is a kind of reasoning 
that may lead us into error ; but that it follows a method which, 
sufficiently persisted in, will be Inductively Certain (the sort 
of certainty we have that a perfect coin, pitched up often 
enough, will sometime turn up heads) to diminish the error 
below any predesignate degree, is assured by man's power of 
perceiving Inductive Certainty. In all this I am inviting the 
reader to peep through the big end of the telescope ; there is 
a wealth of pertinent detail that must here be passed over. 

Finally comes the bottom question of logical Critic, What 
sort of validity can be attributed to the First Stage of inquiry ? 
Observe that neither Deduction nor Induction contributes the 
smallest positive item to the final conclusion of the inquiry. 
They render the indefinite definite ; Deduction Explicates ; 
Induction evaluates : that is all. Over the chasm that yawns 
between the ultimate goal of science and such ideas of Man's 
environment as, coming over him during his primeval wander- 
ings in the forest, while yet his very notion of error was of the 
vaguest, he managed to communicate to some fellow, we are 



104 THE HIBBERT JOURNAL 

building a cantilever bridge of induction, held together by 
scientific struts and ties. Yet every plank of its advance is 
first laid by Retroduction alone, that is to say, by the spon- 
taneous conjectures of instinctive reason ; and neither Deduc- 
tion nor Induction contributes a single new concept to the 
structure. Nor is this less true or less important for those 
inquiries that self-interest prompts. 

The first answer we naturally give to this question is that 
we cannot help accepting the conjecture at such a valuation 
as that at which we do accept it ; whether as a simple interro- 
gation, or as more or less Plausible, or, occasionally, as an 
irresistible belief. But far from constituting, by itself, a 
logical justification such as it becomes a rational being to put 
forth, this pleading, that we cannot help yielding to the sug- 
gestion, amounts to nothing more than a confession of having 
failed to train ourselves to control our thoughts. It is more 
to the purpose, however, to urge that the strength of the impulse 
is a symptom of its being instinctive. Animals of all races 
rise far above the general level of their intelligence in those 
performances that are their proper function, such as flying and 
nest-building for ordinary birds ; and what is man's proper 
function if it be not to embody general ideas in art-creations, 
in utilities, and above all in theoretical cognition ? To give 
the lie to his own consciousness of divining the reasons of 
phenomena would be as silly in a man as it would be in a 
fledgling bird to refuse to trust to its wings and leave the 
nest, because the poor little thing had read Babinet, and 
judged aerostation to be impossible on hydrodynamical grounds. 
Yes ; it must be confessed that if we knew that the impulse to 
prefer one hypothesis to another really were analogous to the 
instincts of birds and wasps, it would be foolish not to give it 
play, within the bounds of reason ; especially since we must 
entertain some hypothesis, or else forego all further knowledge 
than that which we have already gained by that very means. 
But is it a fact that man possesses this magical faculty ? Not, 
I reply, to the extent of guessing right the first time, nor 



THE REALITY OF GOD 105 

perhaps the second; but that the well-prepared mind has 
wonderfully soon guessed each secret of nature, is historical 
truth. All the theories of science have been so obtained. But 
may they not have come fortuitously, or by some such modi- 
fication of chance as the Darwinian supposes ? I answer that 
three or four independent methods of computation show that 
it would be ridiculous to suppose our science to have so come 
to pass. Nevertheless, suppose that it can be so " explained," 
just as that any purposed act of mine is supposed by material- 
istic necessitarians to have come about. Still, what of it ? 
Does that materialistic explanation, supposing it granted, show 
that reason has nothing to do with my actions ? Even the 
parallelists will admit that the one explanation leaves the same 
need of the other that there was before it was given ; and this 
is certainly sound logic. There is a reason, an interpretation, 
a logic, in the course of scientific advance, and this indis- 
putably proves to him who has perceptions of rational or 
significant relations, that man's mind must have been attuned 
to the truth of things in order to discover what he has dis- 
covered. It is the very bed-rock of logical truth. 

Modern science has been builded after the model of 
Galileo, who founded it on il lume naturale. That truly 
inspired prophet had said that, of two hypotheses, the simpler 
is to be preferred ; but I was formerly one of those who, in 
our dull self-conceit fancying ourselves more sly than he, 
twisted the maxim to mean the logically simpler, the one that 
adds the least to what has been observed, in spite of three 
obvious objections: first, that so there was no support for 
any hypothesis ; secondly, that by the same token we ought 
to content ourselves with simply formulating the special 
observations actually made ; and thirdly, that every advance 
of science that further opens the truth to our view discloses a 
world of unexpected complications. It was not until long 
experience forced me to realise that subsequent discoveries 
were every time showing I had been wrong, while those who 
understood the maxim as Galileo had done, early unlocked the 



106 THE HIBBERT JOURNAL 

secret, that the scales fell from my eyes and my mind awoke 
to the broad and flaming daylight that it is the simpler 
Hypothesis in the sense of the more facile and natural, 
the one that instinct suggests, that must be preferred ; for 
the reason that unless man have a natural bent in accordance 
with nature's, he has no chance of understanding nature at all. 
Many tests of this principal and positive fact, relating as well 
to my own studies as to the researches of others, have con- 
firmed me in this opinion ; and when I shall come to set them 
forth in a book, their array will convince everybody. Oh no ! 
I am forgetting that armour, impenetrable by accurate thought, 
in which the rank and file of minds are clad ! They may, for 
example, get the notion that my proposition involves a denial 
of the rigidity of the laws of association : it would be quite on a 
par with much that is current. I do not mean that logical 
simplicity is a consideration of no value at all, but only that 
its value is badly secondary to that of simplicity in the other 
sense. 

If, however, the maxim is correct in Galileo's sense, whence 
it follows that man has, in some degree, a divinitory power, 
primary or derived, like that of a wasp or a bird, then instances 
swarm to show that a certain altogether peculiar confidence in 
a hypothesis, not to be confounded with rash cocksureness, 
has a very appreciable value as a sign of the truth of the 
hypothesis. I regret I cannot give an account of certain 
interesting and almost convincing cases. The N.A. excites 
this peculiar confidence in the very highest degree. 

V. 

We have now to apply these principles to the evaluation 
of the N.A. Had I space I would put this into the shape of 
imagining how it is likely to be esteemed by three types of 
men : the first of small instruction with corresponding natural 
breadth, intimately acquainted with the N.A., but to whom 
logic is all Greek; the second, inflated with current notions 
of logic, but prodigiously informed about the N.A. ; the 



THE REALITY OF GOD 107 

third, a trained man of science who, in the modern spirit, 
has added to his specialty an exact theoretical and practical 
study of reasoning and the elements of thought, so that 
psychologists account him a sort of psychologist, and mathe- 
maticians a sort of mathematician. 

I should, then, show how the first would have learned that 
nothing has any kind of value in itself whether esthetic, moral, 
or scientific but only in its place in the whole production 
to which it appertains ; and that an individual soul with 
its petty agitations and calamities is a zero except as filling 
its infinitesimal place, and accepting his little futility as his 
entire treasure. He will see that though his God would 
not really (in a certain sense) adapt means to ends, it is 
nevertheless quite true that there are relations among pheno- 
mena which finite intelligence must interpret, and truly 
interpret, as such adaptations ; and he will macarise himself 
for his own bitterest griefs, and bless God for the law of growth 
with all the fighting it imposes upon him Evil, i.e. what it is 
man's duty to fight, being one of the major perfections of 
the Universe. In that fight he will endeavour to perform just 
the duty laid upon him and no more. Though his desperate 
struggles should issue in the horrors of his rout, and he should 
see the innocents who are dearest to his heart exposed to 
torments, frenzy and despair, destined to be smirched with 
filth, and stunted in their intelligence, still he may hope that 
it be best for them, and will tell himself that in any case the 
secret design of God will be perfected through their agency; and 
even while still hot from the battle, will submit with adoration 
to His Holy will. He will not worry because the Universes 
were not constructed to suit the scheme of some silly scold. 

The context of this I must leave the reader to imagine. 
I will only add that the third man, considering the complex 
process of self-control, will see that the hypothesis, irresistible 
though it be to first intention, yet needs Probation; and 
that though an infinite being is not tied down to any consist- 
ency, yet man, like any other animal, is gifted with power of 



108 THE HIBBERT JOURNAL 

understanding sufficient for the conduct of life. This brings 
him, for testing the hypothesis, to taking his stand upon 
Pragmaticism, which implies faith in common sense and in 
instinct, though only as they issue from the cupel-furnace of 
measured criticism. In short, he will say that the N.A. is the 
First Stage of a scientific inquiry, resulting in a hypothesis of 
the very highest Plausibility, whose ultimate test must lie in 
its value in the self-controlled growth of man's conduct of life. 

Since I have employed the word Pragmaticism, and 
shall have occasion to use it once more, it may perhaps be 
well to explain it. About forty years ago, my studies of 
Berkeley, Kant, and others led me, after convincing myself 
that all thinking is performed in Signs, and that meditation 
takes the form of a dialogue, so that it is proper to speak of 
the " meaning " of a concept, to conclude that to acquire full 
mastery of that meaning it is requisite, in the first place, to 
learn to recognise the concept under every disguise, through 
extensive familiarity with instances of it. But this, after all, 
does not imply any true understanding of it ; so that it is 
further requisite that we should make an abstract logical 
analysis of it into its ultimate elements, or as complete an 
analysis as we can compass. But, even so, we may still be 
without any living comprehension of it ; and the only way to 
complete our knowledge of its nature is to discover and recog- 
nise just what general habits of conduct a belief in the truth 
of the concept (of any conceivable subject, and under any con- 
ceivable circumstances) would reasonably develop ; that is to 
say, what habits would ultimately result from a sufficient con- 
sideration of such truth. It is necessary to understand the 
word " conduct," here, in the broadest sense. If, for example, 
the predication of a given concept were to lead to our admit- 
ting that a given form of reasoning concerning the subject of 
which it was affirmed was valid, when it would not otherwise 
be valid, the recognition of that effect in our reasoning would 
decidedly be a habit of conduct. 



THE REALITY OF GOD 109 

In 1871, in a Metaphysical Club in Cambridge, Mass., I 
used to preach this principle as a sort of logical gospel, repre- 
senting the unformulated method followed by Berkeley, and 
in conversation about it I called it "Pragmatism." In 
December 1877 and January 1878 I set forth the doctrine 
in the Popular Science Monthly, and the two parts of my 
essay were printed in French in the Revue Philosopkique, 
volumes vi. and vii. Of course, the doctrine attracted no partic- 
ular attention, for, as I had remarked in my opening sentence, 
very few people care for logic. But in 1897 Professor James 
remodelled the matter, and transmogrified it into a doctrine 
of philosophy, some parts of which I highly approved, while 
other and more prominent parts I regarded, and still regard, as 
opposed to sound logic. About the time Professor Papirie 
discovered, to the delight of the Pragmatist school, that this 
doctrine was incapable of definition, which would certainly 
seem to distinguish it from every other doctrine in whatever 
branch of science, I was coming to the conclusion that my 
poor little maxim should be called by another name ; and 
accordingly, in April 1905, 1 renamed it Pragmaticism. I had 
never before dignified it by any name in print, except that, at 
Professor Baldwin's request, I wrote a definition of it for his 
Dictionary of Psychology and Philosophy. I did not insert the 
word in the Century Dictionary, though I had charge of the 
philosophical definitions of that work ; for I have a perhaps 
exaggerated dislike of reclame. 

It is that course of meditation upon the three Universes 
which gives birth to the hypothesis and ultimately to the 
belief that they, or at any rate two of the three, have a 
Creator independent of them, that I have throughout this 
article called the N.A., because I think the theologians ought 
to have recognised it as a line of thought reasonably productive 
of belief. This is the " humble " argument, the innermost of 
the nest. In the mind of a metaphysician it will have a 
metaphysical tinge ; but that seems to me rather to detract 
from its force than to add anything to it. It is just as good 



110 THE HIBBERT JOURNAL 

an argument, if not better, in the form it takes in the mind of 
the clodhopper. 

The theologians could not have presented the N.A. ; because 
that is a living course of thought of very various forms. But 
they might and ought to have described it, and should have de- 
fended it, too, as far as they could, without going into original 
logical researches, which could not be justly expected of them. 
They are accustomed to make use of the principle that that which 
convinces a normal man must be presumed to be sound reason- 
ing; and therefore they ought to say whatever can truly be 
advanced to show that the N.A., if sufficiently developed, will 
convince any normal man. Unfortunately, it happens that 
there is very little established fact to show that this is the 
case. I have not pretended to have any other ground for my 
belief that it is so than my assumption, which each one of us 
makes, that my own intellectual disposition is normal. I am 
forced to confess that no pessimist will agree with me. 
I do not admit that pessimists are, at the same time, 
thoroughly sane, and in addition are endowed in normal 
measure with intellectual vigour ; and my reasons for thinking 
so are two. The first is, that the difference between a pessi- 
mistic and an optimistic mind is of such controlling importance 
in regard to every intellectual function, and especially for the 
conduct of life, that it is out of the question to admit that both 
are normal, and the great majority of mankind are naturally 
optimistic. Now, the majority of every race depart but little 
from the norm of that race. In order to present my other 
reason, I am obliged to recognise three types of pessimists. 
The first type is often found in exquisite and noble natures of 
great force of original intellect whose own lives are dread- 
ful histories of torment due to some physical malady. 
Leopardi is a famous example. We cannot but believe, 
against their earnest protests, that if such men had had 
ordinary health, life would have worn for them the same 
colour as for the rest of us. Meantime, one meets too few 
pessimists of this type to affect the present question. 



THE REALITY OF GOD 111 

The second is the misanthropical type, the type that makes 
itself heard. It suffices to call to mind the conduct of the 
famous pessimists of this kind, Diogenes the Cynic, Schopen- 
hauer, Carlyle, and their kin with Shakespeare's Timon Of 
Athens, to recognise them as diseased minds. The third is 
the philanthropical type, people whose lively sympathies, easily 
excited, become roused to anger at what they consider the 
stupid injustices of life. Being easily interested in everything, 
without being overloaded with exact thought of any kind, they 
are excellent raw material for litterateurs: witness Voltaire. 
No individual remotely approaching the calibre of a Leibniz is 
to be found among them. 

The third argument, enclosing and defending the other 
two, consists in the development of those principles of logic 
according to which the humble argument is the first stage of 
a scientific inquiry into the origin of the three Universes, but 
of an inquiry which produces, not merely scientific belief, 
which is always provisional, but also a living, practical belief, 
logically justified in crossing the Rubicon with all the freight- 
age of eternity. The presentation of this argument would 
require the establishment of several principles of logic that 
the logicians have hardly dreamed of, and particularly a strict 
proof of the correctness of the maxim of Pragmaticism. My 
original essay, having been written for a popular monthly, 
assumes, for no better reason than that real inquiry cannot 
begin until a state of real doubt arises and ends as soon as 
Belief is attained, that " a settlement of Belief," or, in other 
words, a state of satisfaction, is all that Truth, or the aim of 
inquiry, consists in. The reason I gave for this was so flimsy, 
while the inference was so nearly the gist of Pragmaticism, 
that I must confess the argument of that essay might with 
some justice be said to beg the question. The first part of 
the essay, however, is occupied with showing that, if Truth 
consists in satisfaction, it cannot be any actual satisfaction, 
but must be the satisfaction which would ultimately be found 
if the inquiry were pushed to its ultimate and indefeasible 



112 THE HIBBERT JOURNAL 

issue. This, I beg to point out, is a very different position 
from that of Mr Schiller and the pragmatists of to-day. 
I trust I shall be believed when I say that it is only a 
desire to avoid being misunderstood in consequence of my 
relations with pragmatism, and by no means as arrogating any 
superior immunity from error which I have too good reason 
to know that I do not enjoy, that leads me to express my 
personal sentiments about their tenets. Their avowedly un- 
defmable position, if it be not capable of logical characterisation, 
seems to me to be characterised by an angry hatred of strict 
logic, and even some disposition to rate any exact thought 
which interferes with their doctrines as all humbug. At the 
same time, it seems to me clear that their approximate accept- 
ance of the Pragmaticist principle, and even that very casting 
aside of difficult distinctions (although I cannot approve of it), 
has helped them to a mightily clear discernment of some 
fundamental truths that other philosophers have seen but 
through a mist, and most of them not at all. Among such 
truths all of them old, of course, yet acknowledged by 
few I reckon their denial of necessitarianism ; their rejection 
of any "consciousness" different from a visceral or other 
external sensation ; their acknowledgment that there are, 
in a Pragmatistical sense, Real habits (which Really would 
produce effects, under circumstances that may not happen to 
get actualised, and are thus Real generals) ; and their in- 
sistence upon interpreting all hypostatic abstractions in terms 
of what they would or might (not actually will) come to in 
the concrete. It seems to me a pity they should allow a 
philosophy so instinct with life to become infected with seeds 
of death in such notions as that of the unreality of all ideas of 
infinity and that of the mutability of truth, and in such con- 
fusions of thought as that of active willing (willing to control 
thought, to doubt, and to weigh reasons) with willing not to 
exert the will (willing to believe). 

C. S. PEIRCE. 

WESTFALL, PENNSYLVANIA. 



DETERMINISM AND MORALS. 
THE HON. BERTRAND RUSSELL. 

THE importance to ethics of the free-will question is a subject 
upon which there has existed almost as much diversity of 
opinion as on the free-will question itself. It has been urged 
by advocates of free-will that its denial involves the denial of 
merit and demerit, and that, with the denial of these, ethics 
collapses. It has been urged on the other side that, unless we 
can foresee, at least partially, the consequences of our actions, 
it is impossible to know what course we ought to take under 
any given circumstances ; and that if other people's actions 
cannot be in any degree predicted, the foresight required for 
rational action becomes impossible. I do not propose, in the 
following discussion, to go into the free-will controversy itself. 
The grounds in favour of determinism appear to me over- 
whelming, and I shall content myself with a brief indication of 
these grounds. The question I am concerned with is not the 
free-will question itself, but the question how, if at all, morals 
are affected by assuming determinism. 

In considering this question, as in most of the other 
problems of ethics, the moralist who has not had a philo- 
sophical training appears to me to go astray, and become 
involved in needless complications, through supposing that 
right and wrong in conduct are the ultimate conceptions of 
ethics, rather than good and bad, in the effects of conduct and 
in other things. The words good and bad are used both for 

the sort of conduct which is right or wrong, and for the sort 
VOL. VIL No. 1. us 8 



114 THE HIBBERT JOURNAL 

of effects to be expected from right and wrong conduct, re- 
spectively. We speak of a good picture, a good dinner, and so 
on, as well as of a good action. But there is a great difference 
between these two meanings of good. Roughly speaking, a 
good action is one of which the probable effects are good in the 
other sense. It is confusing to have two meanings for one 
word, and I shall therefore speak of a right action rather than 
a good action. In order to decide whether an action is right, 
it is necessary to consider its probable effects. If the probable 
effects are, on the whole, better than those of any other action 
which is possible under the circumstances, then the action is 
right. The things that are good are things which, on their 
own account, and apart from any consideration of their effects, 
we ought to wish to see in existence : they are such things as, 
we may suppose, might make the world appear to the Creator 
worth creating. I do not wish to deny that right conduct is 
among the things that are good on their own account ; but if 
it is so, it depends for its intrinsic goodness upon the goodness 
of those other things which it aims at producing, such as love 
or happiness. Thus the Tightness of conduct is not the funda- 
mental conception upon which ethics is built up. This 
fundamental conception is intrinsic goodness or badness, 
desirability or undesirability. 

In order to be able to pass quickly to the consideration 
of our main theme, I shall assume the following definitions. 
The objectively right action, in any circumstances, is that 
action which, of all that are possible, gives us, when account is 
taken of all available data, the greatest expectation of probable 
good effects, or the least expectation of probable bad effects. 
The subjectively right or moral action is that one which will be 
judged by the agent to be objectively right if he devotes to 
the question an appropriate amount of candid thought, or, in 
the case of actions that ought to be impulsive, a small amount. 
The appropriate amount of thought depends upon the impor- 
tance of the action and the difficulty of the decision. An act 
is neither moral nor immoral when it is unimportant, and a 



DETERMINISM AND MORALS 115 

small amount of reflection would not suffice to show whether 
it was right or wrong. After these preliminaries, we can pass 
to the consideration of our main topic. 

The principle of causality that every event is determined 
by previous events, and can (theoretically) be predicted when 
enough previous events are known appears to apply just as 
much to human actions as to other events. It cannot be 
said that its application to human actions, or to any other 
phenomena, is wholly beyond doubt ; but a doubt extending 
to the principle of causality must be so fundamental as to 
involve all science, all everyday knowledge, and everything, 
or almost everything, that we believe about the actual world. 
If causality is doubted, morals collapse, since a right action 
is one of which the probable effects are the best possible, so 
that estimates of right and wrong necessarily presuppose that 
our actions can have effects, and therefore that the law of 
causality holds. For the view that human actions alone are 
not the effects of causes, there appears to be no ground 
whatever except the sense of spontaneity. But the sense of 
spontaneity only affirms that we can do as we choose, and 
choose as we please, which no determinist denies ; it cannot 
affirm that our choice is independent of all motives, 1 and 
indeed introspection tends rather to show the opposite. It 
is said by the advocates of free-will 2 that determinism 
destroys morals, since it shows that all our actions are in- 
evitable, and that therefore they deserve neither praise nor 
blame. Let us consider how far, if at all, this is the case. 

The part of ethics which is concerned, not with conduct, 
but with the meaning of good and bad, and the things that are 
intrinsically good and bad, is plainly quite independent of free- 
will. Causality belongs to the description of the existing 
world, and no inference can be drawn from what exists to 

1 A motive means merely a cause of volition. 

2 I use free-will to mean the doctrine that not all volitions are determined 
by causes, which is the denial of determinism. Free-will is often used in senses 
compatible with determinism, but I am not concerned to affirm or deny it in 
such senses. 



116 THE HIBBERT JOURNAL 

what is good. Whether, then, causality holds always, some- 
times or never, is a question wholly irrelevant in the considera- 
tion of intrinsic goods and evils. But when we come to 
conduct and the notion of ought, we cannot be sure that 
determinism makes no difference. For the materially right 
action may be defined as that one which, of all that are 
possible under the circumstances, will probably on the whole 
have the best consequences. The action which is materially 
right must therefore be in some sense possible. But if deter- 
minism is true, there is a sense in which no action is possible 
except the one actually performed. Hence, if the two senses of 
possibility are the same, the action actually performed is always 
materially right ; for it is the only possible action, and therefore 
there is no other possible action which would have had better 
results. There is here, I think, a real difficulty. But let us 
consider the various kinds of possibility which may be meant. 

In order that an act may be a possible act, it must be 
physically possible to perform, it must be possible to think of, 
and it must be possible to choose if we think of it. Physical 
possibility, to begin with, is obviously necessary. There are 
circumstances under which I might do a great deal of good by 
running from Oxford to London in five minutes. But I 
should not be called unwise, or guilty of an objectively wrong 
act, for omitting to do so. We may define an act as physically 
possible when it will occur if I will it. Acts for which this 
condition fails are not to be taken account of in estimating 
Tightness or wrongness. 

To judge whether an act is possible to think of is more diffi- 
cult, but we certainly take account of it in judging what a man 
ought to do. There is no physical impossibility about employing 
one's spare moments in writing lyric poems better than any yet 
written, and this would certainly be a more useful employment 
than most people find for their spare moments. But we do 
not blame people for not writing lyric poems unless, like Fitz- 
gerald, they are people that we feel could have written them. 
And not only we do not blame them, but we feel that their 



DETERMINISM AND MORALS 117 

action may be objectively as well as subjectively right if it is 
the wisest that they could have thought of. But what they 
could have thought of is not the same as what they did think 
of. Suppose a man in a fire or a shipwreck becomes so panic- 
stricken that he never for a moment thinks of the help that is 
due to other people, we do not on that account hold that he 
does right in only thinking of himself. Hence in some sense 
(though it is not quite clear what this sense is) some of the 
courses of action which a man does not think of are regarded 
as possible for him to think of, though others are admittedly 
impossible. 

There is thus a sense in which it must be possible to think 
of an action, if we are to hold that it is objectively wrong not 
to perform the action. There is also, if determinism is true, 
a sense in which it is not possible to think of any action except 
those which we do think of. But it is questionable whether 
these two senses of possibility are the same. A man who 
finds that his house is on fire may run out of it in a panic 
without thinking of warning the other inmates ; but we feel, 
rightly or wrongly, that it was possible for him to think of 
warning them in a sense in which it was not possible for a 
prosaic person to think of a lyric poem. It may be that we 
are wrong in feeling this difference, and that what really 
distinguishes the two cases is dependence upon past decisions. 
That is to say, we may recognise that no different choice 
among alternatives thought of at any time would have turned 
an ordinary man into a good lyric poet ; but that most men, 
by suitably choosing among alternatives actually thought of, 
can acquire the sort of character which will lead them to 
remember their neighbours in a fire. And if a man engages 
in some useful occupation of which a natural effect is to 
destroy his nerve, we may conceivably hold that this excuses 
his panic in an emergency. In such a point, it would seem 
that our judgment may really be dependent on the view we 
take as to the existence of free-will ; for the believer in free- 
will cannot allow any such excuse. 



118 THE HIBBERT JOURNAL 

If we try to state the difference we feel between the case 
of the lyric poems and the case of the fire, it seems to come to 
this: that we do not hold an act materially wrong when it 
would have required what we recognise as a special aptitude in 
order to think of a better act, and when we believe that the 
agent did not possess this aptitude. But this distinction seems 
to imply that there is not such a thing as a special aptitude for 
this or that virtue; a view which cannot, I think, be maintained. 
An aptitude for generosity or for kindness may be as much a 
natural gift as an aptitude for poetry ; and an aptitude for 
poetry may be as much improved by practice as an aptitude 
for kindness or generosity. Thus it would seem that there is 
no sense in which it is possible to think of some actions which 
in fact we do not think of, but impossible to think of others, 
except the sense that the ones we regard as possible would 
have been thought of if a different choice among alternatives 
actually thought of had been made on some previous occasion. 

We shall then modify our previous definition of the 
objectively right action by saying that it is the probably most 
beneficial among those that occur to the agent at the moment 
of choice. But we shall hold that, in certain cases, the fact 
that a more beneficial alternative does not occur to him is 
evidence of a wrong choice on some previous occasion. But 
since occasions of choice do often arise, and since there 
certainly is a sense in which it is possible to choose any one of 
a number of different actions which we think of, we can still 
distinguish some actions as right and some as wrong. 

Our previous definitions of objectively right actions and 
of moral actions still hold, with the modification that, among 
physically possible actions, only those which we actually think 
of are to be regarded as possible. When several alternative 
actions present themselves, it is certain that we can both do 
which we choose, and choose which we will. In this sense all 
the alternatives are possible. What determinism maintains is, 
that our will to choose this or that alternative is the effect of 
antecedents; but this does not prevent our will from being 



DETERMINISM AND MORALS 119 

itself a cause of other effects. And the sense in which other 
decisions are possible seems sufficient to distinguish some 
actions as right and some as wrong, some as moral and some 
as immoral. 

Connected with this is another sense in which, when we 
deliberate, either decision is possible. The fact that we judge 
one course objectively right may be the cause of our choosing 
this course : thus, before we have decided as to which course 
we think right, either is possible in the sense that either will 
result from our decision as to which we think right. This 
sense of possibility is important to the moralist, and illustrates 
the fact that determinism does not make moral deliberation 
futile. 

Determinism does not, therefore, destroy the distinction 
of right and wrong; and we saw before that it does not 
destroy the distinction of good and bad : we shall still be 
able to regard some people as better than others, and some 
actions as more right than others. But it is said that praise, 
and blame, and responsibility are destroyed by determinism. 
When a madman commits what in a sane man we should 
call a crime, we do not blame him, partly because he probably 
cannot judge rightly as to consequences, but partly also 
because we feel that he could not have done otherwise : if 
all men are really in the position of the madman, it would 
seem that all ought to escape blame. But 1 think the 
question of choice really decides as to praise and blame. The 
madman, we believe (excluding the case of wrong judgment 
as to consequences), did not choose between different courses, 
but was impelled by a blind impulse. The sane man who 
(say) commits a murder has, on the contrary, either at the 
time of the murder or at some earlier time, chosen the worst 
of two or more alternatives that occurred to him ; and it is 
for this we blame him. It is true that the two cases merge 
into each other, and the madman may be blamed if he has 
become mad in consequence of vicious self-indulgence. But 
it is right that the two cases should not be too sharply 



120 THE HIBBERT JOURNAL 

distinguished, for we know how hard it often is in practice to 
decide whether people are what is called " responsible for their 
actions." It is sufficient that there is a distinction, and that 
it can be applied easily in most cases, though there are marginal 
cases which present difficulties. We apply praise or blame, 
then, and we attribute responsibility, where a man, having to 
exercise choice, has chosen wrongly ; and this sense of praise 
or blame is not destroyed by determinism. 

Determinism, then, does not in any way interfere with 
morals. It is worth noticing that free-will, on the contrary, 
would interfere most seriously, if anybody really believed in it. 
People never do, as a matter of fact, believe that anyone else's 
actions are not determined by motives, however much they 
may think themselves free. Bradshaw consists entirely of pre- 
dictions as to the actions of engine-drivers ; but no one doubts 
Bradshaw on the ground that the volitions of engine-drivers 
are not governed by motives. If we really believed that other 
people's actions did not have causes, we could never try to 
influence other people's actions; for such influence can only 
result if we know, more or less, what causes will produce the 
actions we desire. If we could never try to influence other 
people's actions, no man could try to get elected to Parliament, 
or ask a woman to marry him: argument, exhortation, and 
command would become mere idle breath. Thus almost all 
the actions with which morality is concerned would become 
irrational, rational action would be wholly precluded from 
trying to influence people's volitions, and right and wrong 
would be interfered with in a way in which determinism 
certainly does not interfere with them. Most morality ab- 
solutely depends upon the assumption that volitions have 
causes, and nothing in morals is destroyed by this assumption. 

Most people, it is true, do not hold the free-will doctrine 
in so extreme a form as that against which we have been 
arguing. They would hold that most of a man's actions have 
causes, but that some few, say one per cent., are uncaused 
spontaneous assertions of will. If this view is taken, unless 



DETERMINISM AND MORALS 121 

we can mark off the one per cent, of volitions which are 
uncaused, every inference as to human actions is infected with 
what we may call one per cent, of doubt. This, it must be 
admitted, would not matter much in practice, because, on 
other grounds, there will usually be at least one per cent, of 
doubt in predictions as to human actions. But from the 
standpoint of theory there is a wide difference: the sort of 
doubt that must be admitted in any case is a sort which is 
capable of indefinite diminution, while the sort derived from 
the possible intervention of free-will is absolute and ultimate. 
In so far, therefore, as the possibility of uncaused volitions 
comes in, all the consequences above pointed out follow ; and 
in so far as it does not come in, determinism holds. Thus one 
per cent, of free-will has one per cent, of the objectionableness 
of absolute free-will, and has also only one per cent, of the 
ethical consequences. 

In fact, however, no one really holds that right acts are 
uncaused. It would be a monstrous paradox to say that a 
man's decision ought not to be influenced by his belief as to 
what is his duty ; yet, if he allows himself to decide on an act 
because he believes it to be his duty, his decision has a motive, 
i.e. a cause, and is not free in the only sense in which the 
determinist must deny freedom. It would seem, therefore, 
that the objections to determinism are mainly attributable to 
misunderstanding of its purport. Hence, finally, it is not 
determinism but free-will that has subversive consequences. 
There is therefore no reason to regret that the grounds in 
favour of determinism are overwhelmingly strong. 

B. RUSSELL. 

OXFORD. 



PAIN. 
Miss CAROLINE STEPHEN. 

THE rapid diffusion in recent years of a familiar and detailed 
acquaintance with pain and evil in all their forms has been 
accompanied by a growth of sensitiveness to suffering, whether 
our own or other people's, almost amounting to panic, and 
has produced two opposite reactions, both of which appear to 
those belonging to an older and sterner generation to be full 
of danger. They spring from one root : the assumption that 
pain ought not to exist that it is of necessity an evil. 

The teaching of which " Christian Science " is the most 
familiar type, taking its stand on belief in God as a Being at 
once all-loving and all-powerful, declares that pain cannot 
really exist. Modern rebels, on the other hand, declare that 
since the existence of pain is undeniable, the God of Christian 
faith cannot exist. Both hold that there is no room in one 
universe for pain and for a God who is Love. Both apparently 
feel themselves competent to sit in judgment on the whole 
course of Nature and to condemn it the one as a vast lie, the 
other as a huge system of cruelty. 

To the ordinary mind both these attitudes appear so pre- 
sumptuous as almost to refute themselves. They both imply 
a claim to have mastered the problem of evil and to have 
ascertained its origin with such completeness as to warrant the 
assertion of its needlessness. 

I need hardly say that nothing is further from my intention 
than to offer any alternative solution of that awful problem. 

122 



PAIN 123 

My object is only to consider what, for ordinary people, is the 
right way of meeting suffering. There are multitudes who are 
staggered and perplexed by the daily tragedies and the heart- 
sickening conditions of life surrounding us on all sides, who 
yet desire to find and to keep hold of a courageous and dutiful 
way of meeting the facts of experience ; who can find no satis- 
faction either in denying the reality of pain, or in blaspheming 
against the Author of Life and Order. These ask not what 
God ought to allow, but how we ought to meet that which 
is allowed ; not whether the infliction of pain can be morally 
justifiable, but whether the endurance of it can be made 
morally profitable. They ask not for consolation but for 
strength. Possibly there may be no consolation to be had, 
but there is always the need to endure. If we can but find 
firm ground on which to stand upright and to meet our lot 
without loss of self-respect or lowering of aim, it will be time 
enough after the battle has been fought and won to ask how 
the conflict arose. Meanwhile, it is in fighting the battle that 
we shall answer such questions as it behoves us to ask. 

This is not to say that if Philosophy could solve for us the 
ever-recurring problem of how to reconcile in thought the 
existence of evil with that of a supreme and everlasting Order 
nay, with the existence of any order at all it would not 
make our task infinitely easier. Possibly, indeed, it might 
make all life " a task so light, that Virtue never could grow 
strong." But Philosophy has not yet solved this problem ; 
and we cannot wait for such a solution before living our lives, 
and encountering the inevitable trials of our mortal state. 
Are we at liberty can it be right, wise, or helpful either to 
kick against the pricks or to deny their power to wound ? 

The whole question for practical purposes turns on that 
of the moral and spiritual effects of pain when rightly met. 
Before asking what results have in fact been known to flow 
from it, and what is meant by Tightness of attitude towards it, 
there are two points which need to be made clear. 

In the first place, we are met at the very outset of such an 



124 THE H1JBBERT JOURNAL 

inquiry as this by the question of our own competence to deal 
with it. Few of us can ever be sure that we have had experi- 
ence enough of the power of pain to warrant us in generalising 
about it. In reply especially to any hopeful view of the matter, 
those who are unconvinced can always reply : " That is all very 
well, but you would not say so if you knew as much about 
suffering as I do " ; and there is no common measure for 
such experience. Yet though no one dare boast that he has 
exhausted the possibilities of suffering in his own personal 
experience, and though some degree of exemption from it (for 
the moment, at any rate) may be implied in the very power to 
speculate on its meaning and tendencies, yet no one can live 
long in this world without tasting enough of it to afford some 
test of the bearing, and even of the cogency, of the various 
theories in the strength of which it may be encountered, or 
under cover of which it may be flinched from. For it must be 
remembered that it is not the degree, but the fact of suffering 
which raises the difficulty as to its compatibility with Divine 
Love. 

From a merely logical point of view, one pang suffered by 
the humblest creature is as clearly if not as strikingly incom- 
patible with the idea of omnipotent benevolence as the utmost 
intensity of accumulated torture ; and in like manner the 
experience of blessing springing out of the familiar sorrows of 
ordinary people loses nothing of its weight because there are 
depths of suffering which these have not yet fathomed. It is 
the common lot with which we are chiefly concerned when 
our object is not the solution of a theoretical puzzle, but the 
justification of a definite mental attitude. Whether our own 
experience be in any respect exceptional or not, we can all 
recognise the place which suffering holds in the lives of others, 
and the degree in which our estimate of their character is 
affected by their manner of encountering it. We have all 
suffered enough to know how much it costs and how much 
it avails to meet trial in a brave spirit, as discipline, not as 
mere hindrance. We can in some degree guess what has gone 



PAIN 125 

to the making of such qualities as we see shining in the lives 
of the heroes and martyrs by whose deeds our lower levels of 
life are lighted up, and our deepest veneration called out. At 
any rate, whether competent or not to preach patience, we 
must all be ready to practise it ; and we have all both the right 
and the duty to consider in what light it should be regarded. 

The other point which must be emphasised as a preliminary 
is the distinction between pain and evil. To use the words 
indiscriminately is of course to beg the whole question at issue, 
which is precisely whether pain is or is not of necessity evil. 
All who have seriously considered the matter know how 
difficult it is to frame any definition of good and evil which 
shall not turn in some degree upon the tendency of actions to 
produce or to hinder happiness. But this is not to say that 
good has no other meaning than happiness, or evil than pain 
At every turn we have to recognise that the things are different, 
though mysteriously related. 

The question of the precise meaning of good and evil, of 
course, lies at the very root of the science of ethics, and I am 
not dreaming of grappling with it ; but it is clear that in their 
practical application to everyday life the words pain and evil 
express two very different thoughts ; and that while evil 
obviously cannot be innocent, pain often is so. Of course it 
will be replied that though the suffering of pain may be inno- 
cent, its infliction cannot be so. But this is just the question 
at issue. Does the infliction of pain always mean an actual 
injury done to the sufferer ? If not if, on the other hand, it 
means a moral and spiritual, or even a physical benefit, which 
the sufferer, having the choice, would gladly purchase at that 
cost then there can be no room for calling it evil, short of the 
assertion that the whole constitution of Nature ought to have 
been different, so as to allow of the same results being pro- 
duced by quite other means an assertion which, in the mouth 
of a mere human being, is as idle as it is rebellious. 

We shall, of course, all agree in considering the infliction 
of needless and unprofitable suffering as mere cruelty. But 



126 THE HIBBERT JOURNAL 

who shall dare to say under what fundamental necessity joy 
and sorrow, pain and pleasure, light and darkness are in this 
world as inseparably connected as are the concave and convex 
sides of the line of any curve ? The rashness with which it is 
often assumed that the omnipotence which we attribute to 
God means and that we are therefore justified in asserting 
that He could just as easily have created us and brought us 
to a state of moral perfection without suffering as with it, 
seems incredible when one reflects upon it. Yet this assump- 
tion is the very root of the difficulty. Our own utter inability 
to conceive of any such process or its result might at least 
keep us silent, if we cannot rise to the height of being ready 
to "rejoice in tribulation." 

But not to dwell further on the surprising liberty claimed 
by some to sit in judgment on that whole of which our very 
existence, let alone our moral sense, is but an infinitesimal 
fragment, let us consider what is involved for our daily life 
in the habit of allowing ourselves to regard all suffering 
as evil. 

It would seem to be too obvious a truism to be worth 
recalling (could we ever count upon truisms being kept in 
mind), that courage and patience depend for their very 
existence upon the need and the practice of endurance. It 
is perhaps more to the purpose to ask wherein lie the peculiar 
preciousness and beauty of these two qualities, and how the 
universal reverence for them is justified. The essence of both 
seems to consist in self-mastery ; and self-mastery appears to 
have an intrinsic Tightness and beauty in whatever form it 
may be manifested. The exercise of courage and patience 
involves, of course, the dominion of the spirit over the flesh, 
as we refuse to be deterred by the fear, or disturbed by the 
actual experience, of suffering. Deterred from what? Dis- 
turbed out of what? Does not our instinctive as well as 
reasoned admiration of courage recognise, whether consciously 
or not, the existence of an order, a plan, a design (call it duty 
or truth or beauty, or what you will) which is rightfully 



PAIN 127 

supreme, and the pursuance of which in the teeth of all 
hindrances constitutes our essential idea of virtue? And in 
like manner, does not our admiration of patience imply that 
equanimity is the ideal state of the human spirit ? 

So by the mere fact of our admiration and reverence for 
courage and patience in others we acknowledge that there is 
something better than mere freedom from pain, a better sway 
than that of the emotions. The homage we yield to the 
brave testifies to our sense of the value of the higher law in 
obedience to which they risk, or actually encounter, every 
kind of hardship or suffering. And when from admiration we 
rise to the practice of courage and patience, we do in very 
deed recognise and consent and say Amen to an Order, the 
Author of which is the Object of our inmost adoration. By 
such effectual consent and actual working out in deed of 
loyalty to the higher law we are, I believe, actually, though of 
course gradually, lifted above mere sensation or mere emotion 
raised to a higher plane. And the power to endure, like all 
our active powers, grows through exercise. 

If this be true and I believe that every one of us may 
prove its truth by actual personal experience, for it applies to 
the endurance of all pain, however slight or however intense, 
whether bodily or mental if this be true, we have the key to 
all the religious value for suffering which, though liable to 
such deplorable exaggerations and perversions, is yet so 
incalculable a force. If it be true, the modern revolt against 
all suffering is obviously suicidal. To extinguish all suffering, 
were that possible, would be to deprive the world of a leverage 
as all-pervading and effectual towards spiritual elevation and 
purification as is gravitation towards stability. 

It is not, of course, mere pain in itself that lifts or cleanses. 
It is pain rightly endured which acts as a spiritual lever. By 
pain rightly endured, I mean whatever is courageously and 
patiently borne, from whatever motive. I believe that the 
blindest, the most purely instinctive effort of mere " pluck " 
has a lifting power, and deserves our thankful admiration ; and 



128 THE HIBBERT JOURNAL 

that every degree and every form of courage tends to raise the 
whole tone of life within the range of its influence, in pro- 
portion to the amount and the quality of the endurance 
exercised. 

The lifting power of endurance must probably be measured 
by its motive. The mere instinctive pluck which makes a 
schoolboy ashamed to wince or cry out may have no conscious 
motive at all, and may in fact be inspired by nothing more 
exalted than a general sense of esprit de corps and respect for 
tradition or public opinion. Yet even these things are higher 
than the dominion of mere sensation from which the boy is 
lifted away by them. And when once we arrive at the recog- 
nition of fortitude as an ideal, the conscious and resolute 
practice of it becomes a radiating power of incalculable value, 
the condition of the highest achievements which ennoble life. 
And again, there is a devotion in the strength of which 
courage is kindled into the joyous rapture of martyrdom. 

The higher degrees of courage perhaps all conscious 
devotion to it as an ideal imply of course the distinct recog- 
nition of that, be it what it may, for the sake of which we 
make the effort to rise above our pain. This object, recognised 
as something higher than ease, may be only an ideal. Some 
of us have seen, and wondered at, the sustaining power of that 
devotion to moral beauty and excellence (considered in a 
purely impersonal and abstract fashion as the one supremely 
desirable thing in a life unlighted by any revelation, and not 
necessarily regarded as extending beyond the grave) which in 
these troubled times ennobles and beautifies the lives of so 
many professed Agnostics. We have seen such lives gradually 
being lifted and purified by a power to which they give no 
name, and which seems not to inspire them with any tender or 
personal sense of devotion, but to which they render an austere 
and disinterested obedience. Such as these do not ask for 
consolation ; but neither do they struggle or cry out against 
the Order under which they live, and by which they have been 
wrought into so fine a temper of unworldly and unwavering 



PAIN 129 

integrity. Dumbly they do homage to the nature of the 
lessons taught by the discipline of life, though they may 
refrain from any spring of confidence towards the Teacher. 

Others there are for whom the Light of Revelation has 
shone in the darkness ; for whom the central source of all joy 
and strength is the life of the Crucified One Son of God and 
Son of Man by whom the very gates of heaven are opened to 
all believers. By these, however poor and feeble their own 
presentation of the Christian life, it is yet felt to be essentially 
and of necessity a life of victory. They have recognised once 
for all " the glory of the Cross," and all suffering is for them a 
means whereby the Father's name may be glorified. These 
" count it all joy " when they are called on to endure anything 
for His sake who loved us and gave Himself for us. They are 
ready with all their hearts to follow His call to rise higher 
through suffering, to take up their cross and follow the Captain 
of their salvation in the narrow upward path that leadeth unto 
life. To them the discipline of life is not merely a steady 
obedience to principle, but a blessed and tender instruction 
administered by the Father of their spirits, and prized above 
all mere happiness for its power to draw them nearer to Him- 
self. Such willing scholars in the school of Divine discipline 
have experiences more or less incommunicable, and not to be 
freely spoken of, in the light of which all pain is seen as con- 
taining the possibility of infinite blessing. 

For indeed the experience of the saints that it is good for 
them to have been in trouble is too familiar, too freely shared 
by those who, while never dreaming that they deserve the 
name of saints, are yet one with them in hope and faith, to 
need reassertion. It seems to be in the nature of happiness to 
lessen the forward impulse of the soul. " Stay, thou art fair," 
is the language of the happy, while those who endure cheer 
themselves with the thought, " This too will pass." And not 
only does happiness tend rather to rest than to effort, but in 
proportion as it satisfies it isolates ; whereas pain breaks down 

the barriers between spirit and spirit as nothing else can do. 
VOL. VII. No. 1. 9 



130 THE HIBBERT JOURNAL 

When we are in trouble we call upon God, and are brought 
into sympathy with men. Nothing unites hearts like a sorrow 
shared. 

But though the contrast between these familiar effects of 
joy and sorrow explains the sense of the value of pain which 
makes so many of us feel that our times of trouble are those 
which we could least afford to have blotted out from our lives, 
it does not follow that we feel suffering to be a better thing 
than enjoyment, or indeed to be in itself a good thing at all. 
Its whole value is in the effect of its right endurance in the 
lifting and purifying and stimulating action on the mind for 
which to the brave and patient it becomes a means. It is one 
of the instruments, but is very far from being the only instru- 
ment, in the hand of the Divine Husbandman, by which the 
fruit harvest is brought to maturity. Just because joy and 
sorrow are so powerful and so various in their power, we need 
both, and both need to be administered by more than human 
wisdom and knowledge. The office of brave and patient 
endurance being not only to lift us above the dominion of 
mere emotion, but to reveal to us the presence of the Teacher 
from whom this instruction comes, it is, I believe, our wisdom, 
while accepting willingly from His hand the needful severity 
of discipline, to abstain altogether from intermeddling in the 
administration of it by self-inflicted austerities. A dutiful 
spirit of confidence in Divine Wisdom is the mainspring of 
patience. I do not see how any such confidence can be rightly 
felt in one's own devices for subduing the flesh. 

Indeed, the apportionment of joy and sorrow, pain and 
pleasure, in any lot is a matter with which it does not seem 
conceivable that human wisdom should be competent to deal, 
even were the control of events in its hands. Joy and sorrow 
have their different and perhaps equally important parts to 
play in every life. While sorrow rightly met lifts and awakens 
and braces, joy rightly met rests and melts and ripens and 
perhaps raises also. Surely our wisdom is to open our hearts 
to both, and to take no thought for either, while cleaving to 



PAIN 181 

the guidance of that " stern daughter of the voice of God " 
which sets us free from the sway of our own desires. 

There is one plain duty for us all in the presence of an ever- 
growing acquaintance with the sorrows of the world the duty 
of self-control. Whatever our inmost thought with regard to 
the " Awful Power " by which the conditions of our life are 
ordained, whether we have even a grain of religious faith or must 
content ourselves with ethical principle, let us for any sake keep 
our balance, and not exaggerate, or indulge in rhetorical violence 
of denunciation against that which we can neither prevent nor 
fathom. It is certainly a duty to resist the temptation to an 
excessive value for ease which is at any rate akin to cowardice. 

I have not touched on the haunting horrors by which so 
many minds are overshadowed through dwelling on the worst 
evils of our overcrowded and in many respects corrupt city 
populations. It may be necessary that these things should be 
published, and it may be right that we should all in our 
measure feel their weight and urgency ; but of one thing I am 
sure that they cannot be truly measured from outside, still 
less from afar off. It is not those who are actually engaged 
in a hand-to-hand struggle with evil and degradation who take 
the gloomiest view of things. No others can give due weight 
to the elements of hope and of goodness which are mixed up 
everywhere with human vice and misery. This, I believe, is 
a part of the reward reserved for those who are honestly and 
heartily spending themselves in the service of the poor and 
wretched. They learn to hope against hope, and to see encour- 
agement everywhere. Their sympathy takes that deepest and 
best form which is not a mere reflection of pain, but a community 
of resolve. At any rate we shall do no good to ourselves or 
to others, and we may but too easily harden our hearts, by 
dwelling on pictures of misery and wretchedness without 
attempting any active endeavours to remove or lessen them. 
And if we are to give heart and hope to others, it must be by 
having our own heart and hope fixed on that which cannot fail. 

CAROLINE STEPHEN. 

CAMBRIDGE. 



THE "JERAHMEEL THEORY": 

A MISTAKEN NAME FOR A GENUINE THING. 
THE REV. T. K. CHEYNE, D.Litt, D.D., F.B.A. 

IN the present article the writer, with much reluctance, deserts 
the paths of simple inquiry and exposition. He will not, how- 
ever, try the reader's patience by condescending to the pro- 
cedure of ordinary controversialists. The attacks directed 
against him may often have been of a singular vehemence, 
but the only mode of self-defence that he will adopt is the 
removal of misapprehensions. Possibly the most violent of his 
assailants will pass over these pages, but there must still be 
some unspoiled Bible students who prize the jewel of an open 
mind, and who would say to the writer as the Roman Jews 
said to St Paul, "We desire to hear of thee what thou 
thinkest" What is it, then, that requires to be freed from 
misapprehension ? It is the North Arabian theory in its 
fullest form. It is here contended that Arabia, and more 
distinctly North Arabia, exercised no slight political and 
religious influence upon Israel, especially upon the region 
commonly known as Judah. And now, as always, the writer 
will combine this with a Babylonian theory, viz. that subse- 
quently to a great migration of Jerahmeelites and kindred 
Arabian peoples in a remote century (2500 B.C. ?), and 
again later, Babylonian culture exercised a wide influence 
on Syria and Palestine, and that South Arabia too, which 
was within the Babylonian sphere of influence, profoundly 



132 



THE "JERAHMEEL THEORY' 133 

affected North Arabia, and through North Arabia South 
Palestine. Both directly and indirectly, therefore, Palestine 
received a powerful and permanent stimulus from Babylonian 
culture. 

The portion of this complex theory which is most sharply 
attacked is one which claims to be based not only on in- 
scriptional evidence but also on passages of the Old Testament. 
The question whether it really has an Old Testament basis has 
not yet received half enough attention. This is unfortunate. 
South Arabian evidence may be only probable ; the Assyrian 
and the Hebrew may, in my opinion, be called decisive. Open- 
minded students may well be surprised that there should be 
scholars of the first and second rank who fail to see this, and 
who, strong in their presumed security, not only attack the 
North Arabian theory themselves, but warn their pupils or 
readers against it as a phantasy. 

It may perhaps be objected that the keenest adversaries are 
but a small number of persons, who, being at least on this 
question orthodox, may be expected to show the qualities 
characteristic of too many orthodoxies. In reply, lapsing into 
the first person, 1 admit that the most hostile writers may be 
comparatively few ; but when a member of the larger and less 
bitter class, in paraphrasing a simple narrative of the origin of a 
book, succeeds in transforming an act of generosity into an act 
of calculating prudence, 1 even a saint might feel justified in 
breaking silence. Is this, then, the right way for a young con- 
vert to the historical spirit (for such Professor Witton-Davies 
is) to treat a work of some originality ? I know that it is hard 
to enter into a new point of view, but those who cannot yet 
do this are scarcely trustworthy reviewers. It is disappointing, 
but I must confess that hitherto only " one man among a 
thousand have I found " (Eccles. vii. 28), and he is an American. 

1 I am sorry to have to point this out, for Professor Davies is zealous for 
the higher education in Wales. But truth requires it. See Review of Theology 
and Philosophy, edited by Professor Menzies, May 1908, p. 689; and cp. 
Traditions and Beliefs of Ancient Israel, p. v, "To the Reader." 



134 THE HIBBERT JOURNAL 

Professor Da vies says that he is also an ex- Baptist, and has 
"defended some points of Jerahmeelism." Apparently the 
two things go together. 

The views of this scholar (Professor Nathaniel Schmidt of 
Cornell University) are summed up in an article in this Journal 
(January 1908), entitled, "The * Jerahmeel' Theory and the 
Historic Importance of the Negeb." The opening words of 
this remind me too much of the misleading title of another 
American article, " Israel or Jerahmeel ? " l The truth surely is 
that there are other ethnic or regional names of North Arabia 
Mizrim, Asshur, Cush which would have as much right to 
form part of the title of the theory as Jerahmeel. I dissuade, 
however, from parading any of these names in a title. There 
are too many who are glad to scoff at unfamiliar names, not 
being aware that the questions, " Which were the powers in 
closest contact with Israel ? " and " Where did the ancestors of 
Israel sojourn before entering Canaan ? " are symbolised by 
these names. And not only this, but the due comprehension 
of the Hebrew traditions is bound up with the investigation of 
this subject. 

To prove this, let me select a few passages out of many, 
which contain the name of Asshur (or Shur) or Ashhur as a 
regional name of North Arabia, and which, with one exception, 
have been misunderstood. And first, Gen. xxv. 3 and Ezek. 
xxvii. 23. In the former Asshur[im] is connected most 
closely with Dedan, and only less closely with Sheba, which 
are admittedly North Arabian. In the latter, Asshur stands 
between Sheba and Kilmad, both which ought to be Arabian, 
only the commentators cannot adopt the only natural view. 
" Kilmad " is admittedly corrupt. Next, Gen. xxv. 18. Here, 
beyond doubt, Asshur is most easily explained as a North 
Arabian regional name. The true rendering is, " And they 
dwelt from Havilah unto Shur, which is in front (i.e. eastward) 
of Mizrim." To this an ancient gloss is added, "in the 
direction of Asshur." Shur is the short for Asshur. Another 

1 See American Journal of Theology, October 1907. 



THE "JERAHMEEL THEORY' 135 

passage is Gen. xxiv. 63. Here no doubt the text is corrupt, 
but the right correction, from the point of view of the 
theory, is evident. The common text may be represented 
thus : " And Isaac went out to x in the field at eventide " : x 
stands for a word which is untranslatable, and manifestly 
corrupt; in short, an unknown quantity. And until we try 
some new method, x is likely to remain x. My own experi- 
ence enables me to assert that the new method has been found, 
and that the true reading is, "to Ashhur," which should prob- 
ably be restored to verse 62, where a regional name is really 
wanted. Thus we get for verses 62, 63, "Now Isaac had 
come to Ashhur from the road (i.e. the caravan road) to the 
Well of Jerahmeel, for he was a dweller in the Negeb. And 
Isaac went out into the field at eventide," etc. Ashhur was 
probably not the region so called, but the city of Ephron, where 
Isaac's father dwelt for a time before his death. 1 The Well 
of Jerahmeel, miscalled Beer-lahai-roi, was the great central 
well of the north Jerahmeelite country. For a definite view 
of the situation of this country we may turn to Gen. xxv. 18, 
already explained. 

Another interesting passage is 1 Sam. xxiv. 14 (cp. the 
parallel, xxvi. 20). Can our Bible really give us the original 
writer's meaning? With tasteless servility the chivalrous 
David is here made to say what everyone remembers and 
wonders at. The true reading, however, of the closing words 
is, "a wild ass of Ashhur." A good part of the wide region 
called Ashhur (or Asshur) was no doubt steppe-country, 
where wild asses delighted to roam (Job xxxix. 5-8). That 
surely is a figure both fine in itself and specially appropriate 
for David, who roamed at large in the south country like a 
wild ass. 

We have seen where an early narrator placed the North 
Arabian Asshur. It is quite another thing to be able to 
locate it on the map. It is also troublesome that we have 
two Asshurs to provide for, there being apparently two uses 

1 See my Traditions and Beliefs, pp. 337 f., 349 f> 



136 THE HIBBERT JOURNAL 

of the name, a narrower and a wider. 1 There was probably an 
Asshur which adjoined and may once have included the Negeb, 
and another which was remote from Southern Palestine and 
whose king at some period claimed suzerainty over the smaller 
kingdoms to the north, including especially Mizrim. Its 
capital was probably called Babel.* 

I have mentioned these things partly to justify my 
objection to the phrases "the Jerahmeel theory" and " Jerah- 
meelism," partly because of the intrinsic importance of the 
result to which the facts appear to point, viz. that the rulers 
of a distant Arabian land, called conventionally by the Israelites 
Asshur or Ashhur, were strong enough to invade the Negeb 
and the land of Judah, and were confounded by later scribes 
with kings of Assyria. The cause of the confusion is obvious ; 
it is that the tradition of Assyrian invasions was still in 
circulation. Parallels for the confusion will be given in my 
forthcoming book ; I may therefore proceed to explain another 
regional name, Mizrim, or, in Assyrian, Muzri or Muzur, which 
I have already had occasion to use. Whether it means 
" border-region " seems to me doubtful ; the true meaning of 
regional names is not always the most plausible one. There 
is, however, one result of criticism which seems to me to have 
not been overthrown either by Eduard Meyer or by Flinders 
Petrie or by the latest writer, A. T. Olmstead. 3 It is that 
there was a second land of Mizrim or Muzri, not indeed in the 
Negeb (as the latest writer strangely supposes Winckler to 
think), but in a tract of North Arabia extending perhaps as 
far south as Medina, and in the north probably not far removed 
from the better-known Mizrim, i.e. the Nile Valley. Many 
equally strange doublings of regional names will at once occur 

1 Hommel, however, who knows only of one Asshur, thinks it to have 
extended from the Wady-el-Arish (the miscalled " brook of Egypt") to Beer- 
sheba and Hebron, and that it is the A'shur mentioned together with Muzr in 
an ancient Minaean inscription. 

2 In the article by Professor Witton-Davies (Rev. of TheoL, 1908, p. 692), 
we find a "man of straw," a "Babel in the Negeb." What accuracy ! 

8 Sargon of Assyria (1908), pp. 56-71. 



THE "JERAHMEEL THEORY' 187 

to the student. For instance, it is an assured historical fact, 
not dependent on 1 Kings x. 18, 2 Kings vii. 6, that there was 
a third Muzri in North Syria. 

About the second Muzri there is, I admit, still much 
dispute. Winckler's opinion, however, so cogently maintained 
by him against Professor Eduard Meyer, has notable defenders. 
To say the least, it must be, and is, admitted that there are 
some inscriptional references to Muzri which cannot possibly 
mean either a North Syrian state or the land which we know 
as Egypt. 

Things being so, we must give our best attention to any 
evidence adduced from Assyrian or Egyptian sources, and 
the newest writer on Biblical archaeology l refers me, in 
correction of my own views, to Professor Flinders Petrie. Be 
it so. Eager and impetuous alike as an explorer and as a 
writer, Professor Petrie must produce some effect, even 
though it may not be what he desires. So I turn to his latest 
utterance of opinion, and what do I find ? He tells us that 
the theory of a second Muzri is a fantastic result of unchecked 
literary criticism. 2 Are we really expected to believe this ? 
I know that any unchecked criticism would be a dangerous 
thing ; but how can the Muzri theory, based as it is on 
inscriptional as well as literary evidence, be an example of 
this ? Or will it be asserted that unchecked inferences from 
inscriptions are less dangerous ? Can one, for instance, infer 
from the fact that " Sinai " contains Egyptian monuments 
down to the twentieth dynasty (Petrie, 1202-1102 B.C.), and 
from that other fact (if it be such) that the Egyptian frontier 
stretched across into South Palestine at many periods, that a 
Hebrew writer would call the added region Mizraim ? Yet 
Professor Petrie draws this inference, while frankly admitting 
(Researches, p. viii.) that "there is no trace (in Sinai) of any 
permanent garrison." Elsewhere 3 this scholar speaks of the 

1 See Prehistoric Archeology and the Old Testament, by H. J. Dukinfield 
Astley, M.A., Litt.D. 

2 Researches in Sinai, p. 195. 8 History of Egypt, iii. 283. 



138 THE HIBBERT JOURNAL 

supposed Muzri as situated in "the almost uninhabited desert/' 
Such an assertion, however, is arbitrary. As Winckler 
remarks, " If Roman civilisation penetrated into this region 
under Roman rule, Oriental civilisation penetrated before 
under Oriental rule " ; nor can we doubt that stimulating 
influences came from the more developed culture of South 
Arabia, especially if Winckler is right in supposing that the 
king of Meluba (West Arabia), who was probably the suzerain 
of Muzri, was the head of the Minsean empire, i.e. that the 
archaising phrase " king of Meluha " should rather be " king 
of Ma'in." 1 At any rate, North Arabia cannot fail to have 
been affected in many ways by the more civilised south. The 
tillage of any productive parts of the land would certainly not 
have been exempt from this influence, especially the important 
oases as far south as the neighbourhood of Medina. 

I have now to speak of passages respecting Muzri in the 
Assyrian inscriptions. And first of all, of the passage in 
which Tiglath-Pileser III. states that he appointed Idi-bi'lu 
(evidently an Arabian, not [as Olmstead] a tribe) to be kepu 
(strictly keputu), or, as we, thinking of Indian native states, 
might say, a " resident," over Muzri. Where was this Muzri 
situated ? In 1889 Winckler supposed the reference to be 
to the North Syrian Muzri, but in 1893, with more Tiglath- 
Pileser texts before him, he was able (in my opinion) to show 
that a North Arabian Muzri would alone satisfy the conditions 
of the case. Professor Petrie, however, whom our latest Biblical 
archaeologist brings up against me, interprets this Muzri as, 
not indeed the Nile Valley, but either what he calls Sinai or 
the Isthmus of Suez. One or two chiefs on the eastern side 
of the Egyptian empire, who had achieved their independence, 
may have made their submission and received an Assyrian 
resident. The theory takes no account of the other facts 
adduced by Winckler, and implies that the Assyrian king 
had an ill- served intelligence department. 

Next 1 will refer to an inscription of Sargon. It tells how 

1 See my forthcoming work (Decline and Fall of Kingdom of Judah). 



THE "JERAHMEEL THEORY" 139 

Jamani (probably a Jamanite or Javanite of North Arabia), 1 an 
adventurer put up by the anti- Assyrian party in Ashdod, fled 
before S argon " to the region of Muzur, which is at the entrance 
to Meluha." This at least is Winckler's present translation. 
The passage is by no means without difficulty. It would be 
possible to render, " to the border of Muzur, which (i.e. Muzur) 
is beside Meluha," which Professor Petrie paraphrases, " to 
the frontier of the Egyptian power in Sinai which joins on to 
Arabia." This, he says, is "a perfectly sound expression." 
It is at any rate sound English, but in what sense can it have 
been said that the region which Professor Petrie designates 
Sinai was distinct from Meluha ? And can Meluha be rightly 
paraphrased "Arabia" ? The inference which Professor Petrie 
and now (June 1908) Dr Olmstead 2 have not drawn from the 
Assyrian phraseology, but surely ought to have drawn, is that 
the Muzur referred to by S argon needed to be distinguished 
from some other Muzur, i.e. from Egypt. 

I have no inclination to prolong this debate. Dr Astley 
has accused me (not discourteously) of rashness on the ground 
of historical statements by Professor Petrie ; and these state- 
ments, upon examination, prove to be doubtful. Perhaps, 
however, some other writer may compel my assent. Let us 
search the magazines. Professor Eerdmans, in his notice of 
my Psalter, seems to me to have failed through misappre- 
hensions and unbending textual conservatism. I turn there- 
fore from Leyden to St Andrews, where Professor Menzies 
edits an excellent Review. Here I find an article as unpro- 
gressive in spirit and as liable to strange inaccuracies. The 
writer (Professor Witton-Davies) holds that every form of 
the North Arabian theory is "impossible." How can two 
peoples, both called Mizrites, " have existed side by side without 

1 Less probably a Phoenician or a Greek from Cyprus. Omri, Zimri, and 
Tibi were all probably adventurers from North Arabia : this is inferred from 
the names. Winckler, however, suggests that Jamani (Yamani) may mean a 
man of Jemen (Yemen). What is the history of the name Jemen ? Did the 
name Jaman (Jerahmeel) extend to South Arabia ? 

2 Sargon of Assyria, p. 79, note 68. 



140 THE HIBBERT JOURNAL 

some notice of the fact " ? And must not an exodus from a 
North Arabian land of Mizrim " have been known to at least 
the oldest writers (Amos, etc.) of the Bible, who connect it 
with the well-known Egypt ? " To these brief criticisms 1 will 
reply. As to the first, it is by no means certain that " no 
notice of the fact " was ever given. One notice we have found 
already in Sargon's inscription, and in such Old Testament 
passages as Deut. iv. 20, Ps. Ixxviii. 51, cv. 27, cvi. 21, 22 a 
reference to North Arabia (rather than to Egypt) is guaranteed 
by the rule of synonymous parallelism. Professor Witton- 
Davies may, indeed, question this in Deut. iv. 20, but the 
phrase " the furnace of iron " has no meaning, and only 
prejudice can oppose the methodical textual correction, " the 
furnace of Arabia of Ishmael " (T. and B., p. 109). Still less 
can it be denied that " Mizrim " in the passages from Psalms 
is synonymously parallel to " Ham." What then does this 
strangely short name signify ? I have answered the question 
elsewhere ( T. and B., p. 32, n. 2 ). It is an abridgment of the 
form " Jarham," and therefore equivalent to the racial as well 
as tribal name " Jerahmeel." Passing on to the second point, 
how can any critic possibly prove that references in Amos 
and Hosea to the " land of Mizrim " in connection with the 
Exodus mean " the land of Egypt " ? A thorough study of 
Amos and Hosea seems to point rather to the land of Mizrim, 
in North Arabia. 

I turn much more hopefully to Professor Nathaniel 
Schmidt, because he has attracted the censure of an opponent 
of my own, and because I know that, like Chaucer's priest, 
"gladly would he learn, and gladly teach." Indeed, his 
previous changes of opinion conclusively prove this. He is 
aware of the complexity of the problems before us, and fair 
enough to hold that neither Winckler's theories nor 'my own 
can possibly be as absurd as Professor Eduard Meyer and his 
younger allies suppose. At present he inclines 'to think that 
the kings of Muzri spoken of in certain Assyrian inscriptions 
were not kings or viceroys of a somewhat extensive North 



THE "JERAHMEEL THEORY' 141 

Arabian region, but dynasts residing either in Egypt or in 
districts adjoining it on the east, and also that the region 
called in these inscriptions Meluha was not Western Arabia 
but Ethiopia. I am sorry that Professor Schmidt should 
defend this, and against it would refer to Professor Winckler's 
able answer to Eduard Meyer. 1 I do not think that Meyer 
has made out his case, and Schmidt will certainly agree with 
me in objecting to his tone. Acute as he is, it is dangerous 
to take him for a master. 

Still, I do not myself belong to the irreconcilables, and, 
agreeing on this point with Winckler, am willing to make 
an admission in the interests alike of peace and of truth. It 
may be true that Meyer's view of Muzri and Melu^a has 
fewer elements of truth than Winckler's in the inscriptional 
passages to which a Muzri and Meluha theory is applied. 
But it may be that Egypt and Muzri alike, Magan and 
Meluha, meant to the Babylonians the southern part of the 
earth. 2 The door is thus opened for different geographical 
uses of these names. Magan, for instance, may mean the 
east and south of Arabia, but also conceivably India ; and 
Meluha sometimes the. north and west of Arabia, but also 
Nubia. At the same time, how can we believe that any 
Hebrew writer can have regarded Hagar as an Egyptian? 
The connotation of Mizrim must by a certain time have 
shrunk, leaving room for a twofold interpretation, Egypt and 
North Arabia. Similarly, Melulja may perhaps have come to 
mean either Ethiopia or West Arabia. 

Professor Witton-Davies in the same article speaks of " the 
confusion which, according to Winckler, abounds in our Bible," 
and (referring to myself) finds it "impossible that all our 
notions of ancient geography should be so muddled and 
muddling." 3 But can my critic assert that our " notions " of 
ancient Arabian geography were ever precise ? This was 

1 Diejilngsten Kdmpfer wider den Panbabylonismus, Leipzig, 1907. 

2 See Winckler, Enc. Biblica, " Sinai," sects. 4, 7. 

3 Review of Theology and Philosophy, May 1908, p. 697. 



142 THE HIBBERT JOURNAL 

Professor Schmidt's great difficulty. For a long time he hesi- 
tated as a student of the new theories because of his " ignorance 
of a region of which we had no good maps and no accurate 
descriptions." Hence, when Winckler gave up the identifica- 
tion of the nakal Mizrim with the Wady-el-Arish, and main- 
tained that it was "the stream that rushes into the sea at 
Raphia," he withheld his own decision till he could examine 
the locality. Winckler 's difficulty, of course, was that he was 
loth to accuse a capable Assyrian scribe of topographical 
vagueness. Nor does Winckler speak of a " rushing stream." 
He is much too careful for that, and expressly remarks that 
even an insignificant watercourse might have political and 
legendary importance. Whether this is a conclusive argu- 
ment may be doubted. A watercourse like the Wady-el- 
Arish must, one would think, have been specially distinguished 
in phraseology. I have not myself seen the Wady, but the 
description of it given by the late lamented Lieutenant 
Haynes seems to me ground sufficient for adhering to the 
usual view. 

But the Cornell professor's interest centres in the Negeb, 
that region at the extreme south of Palestine which forms the 
transition to North Arabia. 

The cause of his interest is manifest it is the close associa- 
tion of spots in the Negeb with the history of religion. 
Some of the eloquent sentences in which he sums up his 
views sound almost like passages from the article on Prophecy 
in the Encyclopedia Biblica. Nor can I avoid mentioning 
that he still adheres to an opinion expressed by him in the 
same work, that "the Jerahmeelite theory unquestionably 
promises to throw much light on the obscure history of the 
Negeb." 1 Among the points of detail referred to is the ques- 
tion of the origin of the Cherethites, who, in David's early time, 
occupied a section of the Negeb. Were they really Philistines 
who had come over from Crete ? Professor Schmidt thinks so, 
and the view is widely held ; it is indeed as old as the Septua- 

1 Enc. Biblica, "Scythians," sect. 8. 



THE "JERAHMEEL THEORY' 1 148 

gint. We know, however, that Cherethites and Pelethites 
formed the bodyguard of King David, and it cannot, I think, 
be called likely that this force was composed partly of Semi- 
tised descendants of a Cretan race (Cherethites), partly of fully 
Semitic Arabian tribesmen, akin to David (Pelethites). The 
prevalent theory is based on 1 Sam. xxx. 16 (cp. ver. 14). 
But is it certain that "the land of the Philistines" is not 
equivalent to " the land of the Pelethites " ? Is it certain, too, 
that David's suzerain, the king of Gath, was a Philistine ? l 
If Achish were a Philistine, is it likely that he would have 
accepted David as a vassal, or that David would have wished 
to become one ? And is it not plain that Gath and Ziklag 2 
were further south than is consistent with their being in the 
ordinary sense Philistian localities ? 

Who the Cherethites were, we shall, I hope, see presently. 
At present I devote myself to the very difficult name 
"Philistine" (VIB&D). Most recent critics identify it with 
" Purusati," the first on the list of the " sea-peoples " which, 
perhaps about 1230 B.C., invaded Syria from the north, and 
were opposed on land and sea by Rameses III. I myself still 
accept this identification, but do not feel able to infer from it 
that Saul and David had to deal with Semitised descendants 
of the Purusati. With Hommel, I am of opinion that those 
of the Purusati who remained in Palestine found it convenient 
to settle in the north. Professor Schmidt will admit that this 
opinion is perfectly tenable, and that my own view, that the 
seemingly express references to Philistines in the Old Testa- 
ment are due to a confusion between Pelishtim and Pelethim, 
is at any rate plausible. For my own part, 1 cannot recall any 
other critical theory which is at all plausible. The confusion 
referred to must have spread widely in Palestine, and have 

1 A king of Ekron is called I-ka-u-su in an inscription of Esar-haddon. 
But (1 ) the reading is somewhat uncertain, and (2) in any case a Pelethite might 
have borne the names. 



2 ihpZ* probably from ^}pft=-T$ t p}--in#N, "Ashhur-Gilead." Gilead, 
originally a North Arabian name (Traditions and Beliefs, p. 389). 



144 THE HIBBERT JOURNAL 

been current even among the most highly educated class, from 
whom, in the eighth century, the Assyrian scribes derived it. 
We need not therefore emend " Philistines " into " Pelethites," 
provided that we attach a marginal gloss, "that is, Pelethites." 
There is evidence enough that the Old Testament writers 
really meant, not what the ordinary student means by 
" Philistines," but some population in Southern Palestine or 
North Arabia, which inhabited the Negeb (1 Sam. xxx. 16), and 
Gerar (Gen. xx., xxvi.), as well as the so-called five Philistine 
cities (Josh. xiii. 3). 

And who were those " Pelethites " 1 whom 1 am virtually 
substituting for the familiar Philistines ? Let us look at the 
evidence, (a) In three of the so-called Philistine cities Joshua 
is said to have found Anakites (Josh. xi. 22) : now pss is to 
be grouped with pa, jps, \pp, p3D, pS>os, all of which (even 
pDD) are in their origin North Arabian names, 2 and very possibly 
arose out of popular corruptions of SNOTT. (b) In 1 Sam. vii. 
14, after a statement that Israel recovered its lost territory out 
of the hands of the Philistines, we read that " there was peace 
between Israel and the Amorites." Now, the probability is 
that -no**, like the class-name -IDN from BIN, has come by a 
popular transposition of letters from TDIN (one belonging to 
the southern Aram), (c) In Judges xiv. 3, xv. 18 ; 1 Sam. xiv. 
6, xvii. 26, 36, xxxi. 4 ; 2 Sam. i. 20, we find *n (Arel[ite]), 
D^rw (Arelites), either in the text or as a gloss, where ^nmSo 
(Philistine), DTIID^D (Philistines), or rather ^nf?o (Pelethite), 
D^nbo (Pelethites) are meant. Now Arel[i] is only a popular 
corruption of Jerahmeel[i], unless indeed anyone deliberately 
prefers the tasteless and misleading traditional rendering. 3 
(d) In 1 Chron. ii. 25-33, which is based on old traditions, we 
have a record in genealogical form of a number of Jerahmeelite 
peoples or clans. If we look closely at the names we shall see 

* See Enc. Biblica, " Pelethites " ; Traditions and Beliefs, p. 312. 

2 Traditions and Beliefs, pp. 121, 175. 

8 If the reader will hunt up the references to " uncircumcision " in the 
Old Testament, and avail himself of the help I have offered, he will receive an 
agreeable shock of surprise. 



THE "JERAHMEEL THEORY' 45 

that some of them at least are corruptions either of Jerahmeel 
or of some equivalent name, such as Ishmael, Asshur, Ashkar, 
or Ashtar. Thus Ram is the same name as Aram (see p. 140) ; 
.Tether comes from Ashtar, and Atarah also from Ashtar, but with 
the feminine ending ; Jamin is a modification of Jaman (see 
p. 139), and Eker of Ashkar ; while Peleth, like Tubal (Gen. x. 
2) and Tophel (Deut. i. 1), comes- from an ancient corruption 
of Ishmael, viz. Ethbal. In short, the phrase Peleth ben 
Jerahme'el indicates that the Pelethites were one of the many 
peoples into which the ancient Jerahmeelite or Ishmaelite race 
broke up. According to Am. ix. 7 the Philistines, i.e. the 
Pelethites, came from Caphtor, and the original reading of 
Gen. x. 14 probably agreed with this ; Caphtor is obviously an 
Arabian region, and by a permutation of letters iinoD has not 
improbably come from rnnm (Rehoboth). And now at length 
we see what the Cherethites were, viz. certainly North Arabians 
and probably Rehobothites ; and since Cherethites (like Cherith) 
is almost certainly Caphtor, and the Pelethites are distinctly 
said to have migrated from Caphtor, we may reasonably hold 
that tradition admitted no difference between Cherethites and 
Pelethites. 

So much for the names, which, here as elsewhere, are 
symbols of historical facts. But was David really a kinsman 
of the Pelethites ? Most probably. How else could he so 
easily have obtained a hold on the Negeb, and become, as Pro- 
fessor Schmidt puts it, " the creator of the Judean state " ? 
Did not one of his sisters marry an Ishmaelite 1 (2 Sam. xvii. 
25), and he himself take one of his two first wives from 
(the southern) Jezreel (1 Sam. xxv. 43) ? It is true, he is said 
to have been born at Beth-lehem of Judah (1 Sam. xvii. 12). 
But there were presumably several places called Beth-lehem ; 
the second part of the name is a popular variation of some 
shortened form of Jerahmeel, like melah in ge melah (Eng. 
vers. " valley of salt "), so that we can well believe that there 
were several Bethlehems, and that one was in Zebulun, another 

1 "Israel" and " Ishmael" are confounded, cf. 1 Chron. ii. 16. 
VOL. VII. No. 1. 10 



146 THE HIBBERT JOURNAL 

in the later Judah (the modern Beit Lahrti), and another in 
the Negeb of Judah. It is also true that David's father is 
called an Ephrathite (1 Sam. xvii. 12). But the same appel- 
lation is given to Samuel's father, though he was doubtless 
of southern origin ; indeed, the Septuagint expressly calls him 
a " son of Jerahmeel " (the Hebrew text has, " son of Jarham," 
which means the same thing). Hence, unless we assume 
two inconsistent traditions and neglect 1 Chron. ii. 19, 24, 
we must obviously hold that there was a Calebite, or, as we 
might also say, a Jera.hmeelite, district called Ephrath. 

On the Philistine question, therefore, I agree more nearly 
with Mr Stanley A. Cook (Critical Notes, 1907) than with 
Professor Schmidt. But I have still quite sufficient points of 
contact with the latter respecting the Jerahmeelites and the 
Negeb. Not that even here we are completely agreed. I 
think that Israelites and Jerahmeelites began to mingle as 
early as the Exodus. 1 It also seems to me to stand to reason 
that the Jerahmeelites called Cherethites and Pelethites not 
merely served David in his bodyguard but intermarried with 
Israel, and settled in the enlarged territory of Judah. I should 
not say without qualification that it was David who made 
Yahweh the God of Israel, for 1 think that long before David's 
time the priesthood represented by Jethro incorporated a 
number of Israelite clans into the people (federation) of the 
Jerahmeelite God Yahweh, an event which marks the 
entrance of the original Israel upon a more settled stage of 
life. But we must, of course, acknowledge that David did 
much to heighten the prestige of the cult of Yahweh, as 
practised at Jerusalem. 

With regard to Moses, Professor Schmidt held at one time 
that he was the historical creator of Israel, who gave to his 
people a new divinity, Yahweh. Now, however, he sees that 
Moses is a " mythical figure," whose home was first in Midian 
and then in Kadesh-Barnea, agreeing in essentials with the 
article " Moses " (sects. 14, 17) in the Encyclopaedia Biblica. 

1 Traditions and Beliefs, p. 546, and cp. p. 382. 



THE "JERAHMEEL THEORY' 147 

In details the writer of that article might not always agree with 
the American professor. But on this important point he has 
the support both of Professor Schmidt and of Professor Eduard 
Meyer, viz. that "modern historical research, when it seeks 
for the earliest history of the Hebrew tribes, must travel away 
from Egypt into North-west Arabia." Whether these two 
scholars agree in inferring from the supposed Egyptian names 
Moses and Phinehas that the priestly families of Kadesh must 
have had some connection with Egypt, I do not know. It is 
at any rate Professor Meyer's view, but I trust that no one 
will be so rash as to adopt it. I observe that Professor 
Schmidt congratulates himself (p. 338) that his own and 
Professor Meyer's main conclusion " does not in the least 
depend upon the acceptance of the Muzri theory." The 
statement is literally correct. I venture, however, to think 
that the conclusion referred to would be stronger if the two 
scholars did accept that theory, and if one of them at least did 
not support a disproved explanation of Mosheh (Moses) and 
the less probable of the two possible explanations of Pinehas 
(Phinehas). 1 It may be added that even if the tradition of 
the sojourn of the Hebrew clans in Muzri be rejected, it 
supplies valuable evidence of the North Arabian connection of 
the Israelites and of Moses. But I for my part question 
whether that tradition ought altogether to be abandoned. 

On another question this fair-minded critic proclaims his 
agreement with me (p. 333). He thinks that I have " rightly 
divined" Jerahmeelite influence upon Judah in post-exilic 
times. It is indeed certain that Jerahmeelite tribes, under 
whatever names, were driven north in the Persian period by 
the advancing Edomites (themselves pressed by the Nabateans), 
and so infused a North Arabian element into the weakened 
population of Judah. There is evidence for this in Ezra and 
Nehemiah, and to some uncertain extent in Chronicles. Thus 
in the post-exilic catalogue of "the men of the people of 
Israel" (Ezr. ii., Neh. vii.) we find among the names, as given 

Traditions and Beliefs, pp. 173, 521. 



148 THE HIBBERT JOURNAL 

in the Hebrew text, the bene Par'osh (the Flea-clan ! ) and the 
bene Pashhur (unexplained), designations which (like most 
others) have had a strange history, and ultimately come, each 
by its own road, from bene 'Arab-Asshur and its equivalent 
bene 'Arab-Ashhur respectively ; also the bene 'Elam Aher, 
i.e. bene 'Elam Ashhur; the bene Ater, i.e. bene Ashtar; the 
bene Salmai, i.e. the bene Salmah ; the bene 'abde Shelomoh, 
i.e. bene * Arab- Salmah. We find, too, the place-names Tel- 
Melah, i.e. Tubal-Jerahmeel, and Tel-Harsha, i.e. Tubal- 
Ashhur. These names prove that many families from the 
region still conventionally called Asshur ( = Ashhur, Ashtar) 
or Jerahmeel were admitted into the renovated Israelite com- 
munity. Presumably they were proselytes or the children of 
proselytes. We also hear much in Ezra and Nehemiah of the 
abundance of mixed marriages, which, however, were not 
recognised by the religious authorities. In Neh. xiii. 23, 24 
wives of Ashdodite origin are specially mentioned ; Ashdod 
(from Asshur-Dod) is a regional name of North Arabia. 
Another witness for an Asshurite or Jerahmeelite immigration. 
Let us turn next to the list of builders of the wall (Neh. iii.). 
The goldsmith and the spice-merchant in verse 8 were, surely, a 
Zarephathite and a Korahite respectively. The " ben Hur " in 
verse 9 was of an Ashhurite family. In verse 14 we meet with 
a Rechabite, i.e. a Kenite, and at the end of the list with a 
number of Zarephathites and Jerahmeelites (surely not gold- 
smiths and merchants). Two of these, it will be noticed, are 
heads of political districts. 

It would be unwise to reject this criticism as speculative. 
Evidence from names, critically treated, is almost irresistible. 
I will not, however, deny that its value would be increased by 
monumental evidence. It is, of course, too soon to say that 
no monuments exist, for we have not yet looked for them. 1 
Professor Schmidt's recent expeditions into the Negeb, when 
Director of the American School of Archaeology, were 
rather preliminary surveys than explorations, and the North 

1 Cp. Winckler, in Helmolt's Weltgeschichte, iii. 230. 



THE "JERAHMEEL THEORY' 149 

Arabian Muzri, supposed by Winckler and myself, was out of 
his range. He informs us that he found but few tells in the 
Negeb, a circumstance which may surprise us, considering the 
long list of " cities " in Josh. xv. 21-32 (cp. Neh. xi. 25-30). 
We need not, indeed, suppose that that list accurately repre- 
sents the Negeb of early times ; still the early cities (partly 
disclosed to us by textual criticism) cannot have been much 
fewer. Let us remember, however, that " city " in the Old 
Testament may mean very little. Many so-called " cities " 
were of highly perishable materials, and would be easily effaced 
by the destroyer's hand. 

One criticism I cannot help making, that Professor 
Schmidt, like Professor Meyer before him, confines the 
Jerahmeelites within too narrow an area. It is true that in 
1 Sam. xxvii. 10, xxx. 14 the Negeb appears to be divided 
into sections, one belonging to Judah, and others to the 
Jerahmeelites. But, properly speaking, Jerahmeel was not a 
tribe but a race, and is to be distinguished from the tribes 
which broke off from the parent stock, and sometimes even 
developed into peoples. But to prove that the name Jerah- 
meel or Ishmael has much more than a tribal reference would 
require a far-reaching investigation which I am on the point 
of giving elsewhere. 

There is also another American professor (Dr H. P. 
Smith of Meadville) whom I cannot presume to ignore, but to 
whom I am unable to express gratitude for his treatment of 
my recent researches. Listen to this sentence from the article 
already referred to : 

" We are at a loss to discover why Jabal, Jubal, Mahalaleel, 
Lamech, . . . should not have been allowed to appear in 
their original form as Jerahmeel, or why Joktheel should 
supplant Jerahmeel as the name of a city, or why Beer-lahai-roi 
should be forced into the place of en- Jerahmeel " (p. 566). 

Allowed ! Supplant ! Be forced ! Could there be any 
greater proof of unwillingness to enter into a new point of view 
than this ? Surely the first duty of the critic is not to tell the 



150 THE HIBBERT JOURNAL 

world whether he agrees with, i.e. is prejudiced in favour of, 
some other scholar, but to show that he comprehends the 
other's point of view. And the second duty is "like unto it." 
It is to study the new tracks which the new point of view has 
suggested to that other, and state where he understands and 
where he requires further help, and also, no doubt, where he 
can himself offer help to that other. And the whole inves- 
tigation should be permeated by the spirit of fairness and 
accuracy. 

But no, the critic is not to be the fellow-student and in 
some sense the disciple of that other, but his judge. As if 
any critic could venture either to praise or to blame a book 
of extensive range and originality, except with modesty and 
as the result of sympathetic study ! A judge, indeed, is not 
called upon to be modest, but how can any critic pass sentence 
upon a book of this character? If he assumes the role of 
judge, is he not in imminent danger of hindering the progress 
of his study, and discouraging that originality which is the 
salt of learning, and the prize of long years of critical research ? 

Professor Smith does not seem to have realised that the 
stories which underlie the Israelite legends were, many of 
them, brought from a distance, and that with the stories came 
the names of the legendary places and the legendary heroes. 
These stories, if I see aright, were derived from different 
tribes, all Jerahmeelite, and it is probable that almost in each 
the name Jerahmeel took a different form or different forms. 
That ethnic names like Jerahmeel, Ishmael, Asshur, Israel, 
should be worn down by use, was inevitable, and the attrition 
would have different results among different groups of people. 
When, therefore, it is said that Jabal and Jubal are forms of 
Jerahmeel, and that Jubal is a form of Ishmael, it is not 
meant that they have come directly from Jerahmeel or 
Ishmael, but from some popular or tribal corruptions of these 
names. 

There is much more that ought to be said if space allowed, 
but for this I must refer to the introduction to my forth- 



THE "JERAHMEEL THEORY' 151 

coming work, The Decline and Fall of the Kingdom of Judah. 
One point of much importance may, however, be indicated. 
When Samaria was taken, the catastrophe which ensued was 
not only political but literary. What was saved of the North 
Israelitish records must have been scanty in extent, and the 
South Israelites or Judaites did not care to preserve it except 
in a mutilated, confused, and altered form. Hence by far the 
greater part of the extant literary monuments of ancient Israel 
are precisely those monuments whose producers were most 
preoccupied by North Arabia. This is why the history both 
of Israel and of Judah has found such a one-sided representation 
in the Old Testament. This, too, is why the North Arabian 
key has plausibly solved so many problems, that critics who 
have perhaps not gone deeply enough into the matter are 
repelled. Had a different class of documents been trans- 
mitted, the North Arabian key might not have equally 
fitted the new problems. I trust that this consideration may 
tend to conciliate opponents, and induce them to assume the 
role, not of judges, but of fellow- students. As Professor 
William James well says, " When larger ranges of truth open, 
it is surely best to be able to open ourselves to their reception, 
unfettered by our previous pretensions." 

T. K. CHEYNE. 

OXFORD. 



HOW MAY CHRISTIANITY BE DEFENDED 

TO-DAY ? 

PROFESSOR A. C. M'GIFFERT, 

Union Theological Seminary, New York. 

THE changes in religious ideals and in theological beliefs 
witnessed in recent years have resulted in widespread confusion 
touching the aim and method of Christian Apologetic. What 
is it the Christian Apologist has to prove, and how is he to do 
it ? In discussing this question, I wish to avow at the start my 
sympathy with the modern social emphasis, and to declare my 
belief that Christianity stands primarily for the promotion of 
the Kingdom of God in this earth, that is, the reign of 
sympathy and service among men. The number of Christians 
holding this belief is very large and constantly increasing. It 
is in their emphasis upon it that the principal characteristic of 
modern Christianity is to be found. It differs from traditional 
Christianity not chiefly because modern Christians disbelieve 
many of the things the fathers believed, but because, in their 
interest in this one great end, many of the things the fathers 
believed seem unimportant to them. It is not doubt of the 
truth of traditional doctrines, but doubt of their value, that is 
always most ominous. The former may testify only to a 
scepticism which exists in every period ; the latter foretells the 
coming of a new age. When many men are interested enough 
in a particular system to attack it, it still has a hold upon the 
world ; when they are too absorbed in other matters to trouble 
themselves about it, its day is over. And so it is evident that 



152 



THE DEFENCE OF CHRISTIANITY 153 

a new age has dawned in the history of Christianity and the 
old apologetic is out-of-date, not because it attempts to 
prove so many unbelievable things, but because it attempts to 
prove so many things in which men have no interest. Much 
mattered in other days which does not matter now. An 
apologetic which is to be of any value to-day must defend the 
things that matter to-day, and only those. The question, then, 
for the modern apologist is not merely what is true, but what 
is important. What is the one thing, if there be one thing, 
that really counts the one thing whose acceptance or rejection 
means the acceptance or rejection of Christianity? For this 
it is the business of the Christian apologist to secure approval 
and support. Failing this, his apologetic is a failure, whatever 
else he may successfully defend. 

I. The apologist who believes that Christianity stands 
primarily for the promotion of the Kingdom of God in this 
earth, that is, the reign of sympathy and service among men 
and it is only for those who believe this that I propose to 
speak in this paper must labour to secure the recognition and 
adoption of this ideal ; to convince men that it is not only 
worthful but supreme. And, fortunately, it is easier now 
than formerly to convince men of this. Without as well as 
within the church there are multitudes to whom it is already a 
commonplace, and who recognise the service of their fellows as 
their highest duty. In other days chief emphasis has often 
been laid upon a man's duty to God or to himself, but now his 
duty to his neighbour overshadows all else. The widespread 
recognition of this duty and the widespread interpretation of 
Christianity in these terms have gone hand in hand and are 
the fruit of similar influences. Those who read the Gospel 
thus are children of their age, and have a message which appeals 
to it with peculiar force. 

But though the spirit of the present day is widely in 
sympathy with this ideal, the apologist's task is not as simple 
as it seems. It is not that there is difficulty in securing the 



154 THE HIBBERT JOURNAL 

practical realisation of the ideal, and inducing men actually to 
live in accordance with such a principle, for with this apologetic 
has nothing to do. It deals with theoiy only, not with practice. 
But to secure even in theory the general recognition of the 
supremacy of the principle of service is not easy. The more 
clearly the principle is apprehended and its consequences under- 
stood, the sharper often becomes the antagonism to it. A 
prominent judge of sterling integrity and of the highest moral 
character, after listening recently to a clear and forceful 
presentation of the social message of Christianity, remarked 
that he believed the speaker had stated accurately the real 
teaching of Jesus and the real meaning of Christianity, and 
just because of this he was not a Christian, for to him the 
only possible state of human society seemed a state of competi- 
tion, not co-operation, where every man looks out primarily for 
his own interest, and only secondarily for that of others. To 
maintain anything else and to labour for anything else seemed 
to him only fanaticism or folly, and argued small acquaintance 
with the real world of men. And this spirit is no exception even 
in these days of new social interest and enthusiasm. Few may 
be willing to avow themselves so frankly, but that present 
conditions are essentially unalterable and bound to persist, 
and that anybody who attempts to meddle with them is a 
dangerous character, and that any interpretation of Christianity 
which threatens their stability is mischievous this is a 
widespread belief, and it is with men thinking thus that 
our apologetic has first to deal. Is the highest thing in the 
world the promotion of the reign of sympathy and service 
among men, or is it not ? Is a state of society in which the 
spirit of brotherhood, voicing itself in mutual sympathy and 
service, is in complete control supremely desirable, or is it 
not ? And if it is, is it an end worthy the effort of rational 
men, or is it so impracticable as not to be entitled to serious 
consideration a mere Utopia, no better than an idle dream ? 
This is a fundamental question. Rational men must be 
convinced of the practicability as well as the desirability of 



THE DEFENCE OF CHRISTIANITY 155 

the idea] or they will not accept it. Not that we must show 
that perfection is attainable, or that we are to expect this 
or any other ideal to be fully realised. With such perfection, 
as with the Absolute in general, the modern apologist has 
nothing to do. But that it is a distinctly practicable ideal, 
whose realisation can be promoted by honest and united 
effort; that the reign of sympathy and service can be pro- 
gressively substituted for selfish rivalry and cut-throat com- 
petition this the apologist must maintain, and his success 
in winning support for his ideal will be largely in pro- 
portion to his success in convincing men of this possibility. 
The apologist must show first that the highest thing a 
man can do is to put himself and his talents at the 
service of the community, to help those who need help, and 
to enrich the common life of man by all that he can give it, 
whether of art, or science, or learning, or wealth, or physical 
strength, or moral goodness, or ethical ideals ; and secondly, 
that, doing this, he is not merely wasting his energies, but is 
contributing to the progressive realisation of the highest 
social ideal, the Kingdom of God on earth. If the apologist 
cannot show this, his apologetic is a failure. 

II. The one fundamental thing is to win support for this 
ideal. If all good men can be enlisted in the promotion of 
this end it matters little by what name they call themselves, 
Christians, Jews, Ethical Culturists, Humanitarians, Free- 
thinkers, Agnostics, or Atheists. This the broad-minded man 
of to-day, to whom the ideal of service is supreme, freely 
recognises, whether he be a Christian or not ; and so we have 
the many co-operative efforts of modern times, in which 
men of the most various faiths unite for the promotion of 
a common end. 

But for the Christian apologist it is not enough to stop 
with the defence of this common ideal of service. Men may 
be led to recognise it and to make it their own, but they 
may remain entirely out of sympathy with Christianity as they 



156 THE HIBBERT JOURNAL 

understand it, and the Christian apologist cannot be content 
to leave them thus. His principal interest should be to effect 
the adoption of the ideal of service ; but he is interested also, 
if he be a Christian apologist, to secure recognition for 
Christianity, and this not as an independent and unrelated 
thing, but as itself the chief embodiment of men's purpose to 
promote the ideal. This may seem to many of little import- 
ance. If the ideal be adopted and in the way of realisation, 
all else is of minor consequence. But the matter cannot be 
so easily dismissed. To leave men of good-will divorced from 
Christianity and out of sympathy with Christ is to divide the 
forces that make for the promotion of the Kingdom, and to 
fail to recognise this ideal as the Christian ideal is to leave the 
great Christian movement uncommitted to the purpose which 
should be its supreme concern. Even Christian men may 
recognise so clearly the supremacy of the ideal that they would 
stand for it though it should prove not to be Christian ; but if 
it be Christian so much the better for Christianity, and so much 
the better for the ideal. Standing for the highest purpose we 
know, Christianity rallies increasingly to its standard men to 
whom that purpose is supreme, and in support of that purpose 
is enlisted all the faith, the love, the loyalty, the devotion, the 
sacrifice which the name of Jesus inspires in the breasts of 
multitudes who rejoice to call themselves His disciples. And 
so a second step in Christian apologetic should be to show that 
the ideal for which we stand is truly Christian ; that to promote 
the reign of sympathy and service among men was the control- 
ling purpose of Christ Himself, and must be the controlling 
purpose of Christianity if it would be true to Him. Fortunately, 
modern study of Jesus has made this very clear, and we are 
recognising with a unanimity never reached in other days that it 
was for this Jesus laboured, and for this He summoned men to 
follow Him, and so inaugurated the great movement which bears 
His name, all unconscious though He may have been of what 
it was to lead to. But it is not enough to show this simply ; 
it is necessary to make clear that this is the one essential 



THE DEFENCE OF CHRISTIANITY 157 

thing in Christianity in such a sense that the man who stands 
for this principle is truly Christian even though he reject all 
else that commonly goes by the name of Christian, and that 
the man who avows himself a Christian thereby commits 
himself at least to this one great purpose, whatever else he 
may support or repudiate. If we succeed in showing this 
both to men without and men within the church, we shall 
commend Christianity to those who share the one supreme 
ideal, and we shall rally to the support of that ideal those to 
whom Christianity is dear. We shall thus at the same time 
promote the credit of Christianity and multiply the forces 
making for the realisation of the ideal we have most at heart. 

III. Undoubtedly a man may make this ideal his own, 
and may consciously follow Christ in a life of sympathy and 
service, and yet be quite without religious faith and devotion. 
To such a man no one may rightfully deny the name of 
Christian. To live Christianly is to give oneself to the pro- 
motion of the end for which Christ lived, whatever one's 
religious faith or lack of faith. But Christ gave His message 
a religious basis, whose significance and value the modern 
apologist clearly recognises, and so a third step in his apologetic 
is to commend that religious basis to men of good-will ; is 
to show that the purpose which Jesus made His own, and 
which we recognise as supreme, is the purpose of God Himself, 
the Christian God. 

The traditional belief in the pre-existence and deity of 
Christ represents a sound instinct. It voices the conviction 
that the Christian ideal, if it is to have supreme worth and 
permanent validity, and if its ultimate realisation is to be 
guaranteed, must come from God and have His support. 
Christians to-day may recognise that the traditional doctrine 
is defective, and may see that there are other and perhaps 
better ways of conserving the interest which it has conserved. 
But Christian instinct demands that in some way the connec- 
tion shall be made and the divine basis found, and so Christian 



158 THE HIBBERT JOURNAL 

apologetic maintains that the idea which it has shown to be 
supreme and Christian is divine, that it represents the will 
and the purpose of God. Maintaining this, there is added to 
the conviction of its worth faith in its realisation. To effort 
is joined confidence, to devotion assurance. This is the 
essential nature of Christian faith. Not that God is the 
Creator of the world, the absolute substance, the unifying 
principle of existence, the summum bonum, the all-pervading 
Spirit, but that He is will and power for the promotion of 
the Christian purpose. Other kinds of faith in God may be 
good, and may bring comfort, inspiration, and joy ; but this is 
the one specifically Christian faith. And upon it the Chris- 
tian apologist lays stress, not because a man cannot live 
Christianly without it as a matter of fact, multitudes of 
devout Christians have known nothing of it but because it 
supplies power for the promotion of the one great end, which 
is to be had in no other way. 

The modern apologist, therefore, cannot escape the tradi- 
tional theistic obligation. To promote belief in God is an 
important part of his task, not, to be sure, as an end in itself, 
but as a means to another end. But the theism in which he 
is interested is of a different type from that upon which 
traditional apologetic has laid stress. Modern disbelief in God 
(whether disbelief is more or less common than in other days) 
is due in large measure to the persuasion of the self-sufficiency 
of the phenomenal universe, to the feeling that God is needed 
to account neither for its origin nor for its continuance. With 
this disbelief Christian apologetic has nothing to do, and its 
wide prevalence is no ground for alarm. If Christian faith 
were dependent upon the overcoming of this unbelief we 
might well be discouraged. But Christian faith moves wholly 
in another realm, the realm of ethical values. For the 
Christian imbued with the modern spirit God exists for the 
sake of the ideals which are precious to him. If they are 
realisable, it is because they are rational, because they are in 
line with, and not opposed to, the universe in which they must 



THE DEFENCE OF CHRISTIANITY 159 

be realised ; in other words, because divinity is at the heart of 
things, and they themselves are divine. It is just this faith 
which the Christian message brings, and just this faith which 
the life of Jesus, a life of victory in seeming defeat, guarantees. 
That the world recognises His victory means, if the world but 
knew it, that it recognises not simply the beauty but the 
validity of His ideals, or, in other words, it means that the 
world recognises their divinity. Thus the modern apologist 
gives to the supreme ideal which he is chiefly interested to 
promote the support of religious faith. The ideal once recog- 
nised as God's commends itself to multitudes of believers in 
God to whom it meant nothing before, and to those to whom 
it was already dear the faith that it is God's gives a new 
enthusiasm and courage. The wise apologist deals in affirma- 
tions, not negations. He does not make the mistake of 
denying the Christian character of the ideal divorced from 
its religious basis, and so alienate from its support those to 
whom the religious message does not appeal ; but he recognises 
the immense power of the latter where it is a reality, and he 
labours to make it increasingly and ever more widely real. 

IV. Finally, it is quite possible that a man may accept 
Christianity both as an ethic and as a religion, and yet remain 
out of sympathy with the Christian church and apart from 
its communion. His love of personal independence, which 
he fears may be imperilled if he becomes a member of such 
an institution, his dislike of engaging in public religious 
exercises, his distaste for established rites and ceremonies, his 
recognition of the faults of the church, and his lack of sympathy 
with much for which it stands all this and much else may 
lead him to hold himself aloof. But Christian apologetic has 
not accomplished its full work until it has shown the im- 
portance of the Christian church, and commended it to all 
those who are devoted to the promotion of the Kingdom of 
God on earth. It is the business of the Christian apologist 
to prove that, in spite of all its failures and mistakes, in spite 



160 THE HIBBERT JOURNAL 

of its frequent distortion of values, and its all too common 
emphasis upon the wrong things, the Christian church has an 
indispensable place in the promotion of the great cause, and 
so to rally around it all to whom that cause is dear. For this 
purpose it is not necessary to defend any existing church or 
all existing churches, but to show that Christian church there 
must be if the Christian purpose is to be progressively realised 
in this our world. And that can be shown chiefly in 
two ways. 

In the first place, the Christian purpose is a social purpose. 
It has to do with the reign of sympathy and service among 
men, and so eventuates not in the perfection of the individual 
character, conceived as an isolated unit, but in the perfecting 
of men's relations with one another. To accomplish this social 
end it is imperative that there be conscious community of 
purpose and conscious combination of effort. For men 
interested in the common end to work in complete isolation 
is not only to sacrifice the strength which union of forces gives, 
but to make the realisation of the end itself impossible. The 
end is co-operation as broad as the brotherhood of man, and 
this can be promoted only by similar co-operation on a smaller 
scale and in a more limited circle. If those interested in the 
great end cannot work with others similarly interested, the 
hope of a universal co-operation is certainly small. The prin- 
cipal reason why so many who are devoted to the promotion 
of the one great purpose find themselves out of sympathy with 
the church, and hold themselves aloof from it, is that the 
church has so widely concerned itself with other irrelevant or 
inconsistent ends, and so seems to have no significance for the 
promotion of the Kingdom, which must come rather in spite of 
it than because of it. If this were the case if the church 
were really an obstacle rather than a help to the promotion 
of the Kingdom of God on earth no other benefits that might 
accrue from it, however valuable in themselves, would justify 
the Christian apologist in coming to its defence. But the 
failure of any or all existing churches to fulfil their true mission 



THE DEFENCE OF CHRISTIANITY 161 

would be no sufficient ground for the assumption that we 
could do without a church altogether. If those we now have 
do not stand for the right purpose they should be reformed 
or others put in their place, but church there must be if 
the purpose is to be accomplished ; that is, there must be 
co-operation instead of individualistic, isolated labour. Any 
institution in which such co-operation exists is a Christian 
church whatever its relation to the historic institutions that 
bear that name. To the degree in which the various agencies 
making towards the one Christian end co-operate consciously 
and sympathetically is the one church of Christ realised. Not 
sacraments, or doctrines, or historic descent, or ministerial 
succession, makes the Christian church in which the modern 
apologist is interested, but an organised body of men enlisted 
for the promotion of the one great end, wide enough to em- 
brace them all, and of such a character as to call out their 
best effort and enthusiasm. In such community of purpose and 
of effort are found all the blessings of Christian communion 
that the church has promised to its members. Communion 
with Christ and with the saints means, above all else, com- 
munity of effort for the one great Christian end. 

In the second place, the church is indispensable because 
no ideal can establish itself permanently unless it be made a 
part of the heritage of each rising generation ; unless it be 
knit into their fibre by early training, and grow with them to 
maturity. For such implanting of the ideal, not simply in 
an individual here and there, but in an entire community, and 
even in an entire civilisation, institutions are needed which 
embody that ideal, and visibly symbolise it to generation after 
generation. If the ideal of sympathy and service be not 
inculcated diligently, persuasively, unremittingly ; if it be not 
kept alive by constant emphasis, by common effort, and by 
visible symbol, it will soon be lost altogether. And here lies 
the great significance of the church as an historic, world-wide 
institution, tracing its lineage back to Jesus Christ, in whom 
the Christian purpose found its supreme embodiment, and 
VOL. VII. No. 1. 11 



162 THE HIBBERT JOURNAL 

consecrated by the lives and deaths of multitudes of those who 
have humbly and faithfully followed Him. The Christian 
church, within which, in spite of all its errors, is kept alive 
the memory of Jesus and devotion to Him, and within which 
has been cultivated during all the centuries faith in His Father 
God, and confidence in His purpose to establish the Kingdom 
such an institution has untold value for the accomplishment 
of the Christian purpose. No society which we could form 
to-day could begin to do what it may do if it be committed 
to the one great end. All the loyalty of its members to Jesus 
Christ and to His Father God, and all their loyalty to the 
church itself, the church of their fathers and their church, 
though it may often have led them astray, is capable of being 
enlisted for the promotion of the Kingdom. Not to condemn 
and repudiate the church, and not to hold oneself aloof from 
it in contempt or indifference, but to reinterpret to itself its 
own ideal, in order that its heritage of power may be employed 
for the realisation of that ideal that is the wise method for 
all to whom the ideal is dear. And no Christian apologetic 
has fulfilled its task until it has made this clear to all men of 
good-will. 

An apologetic which should succeed in showing these four 
things : first, that the ideal of human sympathy and service 
is the highest of all ideals ; secondly, that this is the Christian 
ideal in such a sense that the man who shares it may properly 
call himself a Christian, and that the man who would be truly 
a Christian must make it his own ; thirdly, that this Christian 
ideal is a divine ideal, supported and promoted by God ; and 
fourthly, that the Christian church is an institution in the long 
run indispensable for the promotion and realisation of this ideal 
an apologetic which should succeed in showing all this 
would seem a sufficient and indeed complete Christian 
apologetic, leaving out nothing essential and including nothing 
unimportant. 

A. C. M'GIFFERT. 

NEW YORK. 



BOOKLESS RELIGION. 1 
JAMES MOFFATT, D.D. 

BY bookless religion I do not mean brainless religion. At the 
outset I would disclaim emphatically the slightest desire to 
undervalue either theology or literature as factors in the 
discipline of the Christian ministry. Theology is like guide- 
books ; both are commonly depreciated by the very class of 
people who stand in sorest need of them. Within certain 
obvious limits, the more books a minister can manage to read, 
the better for himself and for his people. The theological 
college is at any rate one place where a man should learn to 
sink intellectual mines which will repay working in the after- 
days. If he learns there how to read hard and wisely, how 
economical it is to study large books by experts, and how 
fruitful is all work done at first-hand upon the sources, he will 
probably have done much by anticipation to preserve his 
ministry not only from the unbalanced vagaries of the amateur 
in theology, but from that error which, I imagine, our best 
people resent or at least ought to resent the error of suppos- 
ing that to preach adequately means the public reading of a 
literary essay touched more or less delicately with religion. 

What is before my mind is rather an attitude of 
life which we find among men ; it is a way of looking at 
religious truth which may be that of Kenan's Gavroche or of a 
higher type, often characterised by considerable penetration 
and common sense, by such qualities as honesty, shrewdness, 
and moral interest, yet to a very minor degree nourished by 

1 An address to students for the Christian ministry. 
163 



164 THE HIBBERT JOURNAL 

reading. It appears to me that this temper or attitude is more 
influential than some of us are at first disposed to admit. Our 
academic training tends to exaggerate the importance which 
attaches to the printed page. Books form so large and central 
a factor in our early world of educational discipline that we are 
apt to assign quite an undeserved circumference to what is 
known as the reading public. It is assumed, too lightly, that 
the majority of people, with whom most of us have to deal, are 
familiar, or desire to be familiar, with serious literature. As a 
matter of fact, they are not. 1 deplore this, but I cannot deny 
it. " The public which reads in any sense of the word worth 
considering is very small," as Mr George Gissing bluntly put 
it. Mr Gissing was a pessimist, but his views on the popular 
vogue of literature are not the froth of deliberate despair. " The 
public which would feel no lack if book-printing ceased to- 
morrow, is enormous. Gather from all ends of the British 
Empire the men and women who purchase grave literature as a 
matter of course, who habitually seek it in public libraries, in 
short, who regard it as a necessity of life, and I am much 
mistaken if they could not comfortably assemble in the Albert 
Hall." Such was the mature verdict of a man who loved books 
and wrote books. 

Now, this may be regrettable, and it is doubtless one 
function of the Church to foster education and culture : we 
in Scotland, at any rate, can pride ourselves on the fact that 
the connection between the Church and education is honour- 
able and historic. But the immediate point is that, as things 
are, we have to reckon with a public, three-fifths of whom, 
within most of our congregations, are inaccessible to religious 
appeals or instructions which are either couched in bookish 
form or put in such a way as to involve literary allusions. 
Such people, on whatever social level they move, are generally 
far from unintelligent. Just as a love for literature is not 
necessarily equivalent to sympathy with the finer ideals of 
humanity, so this cheerful apathy towards books by no means 
disqualifies men and women for an appreciation of solid 



BOOKLESS RELIGION 165 

ideas or an understanding of human nature in its deeper 
interests and issues. Observation and experience are the 
university of the common man. He graduates there with 
degrees which entitle him to speak with considerable authority 
upon the laws and practice of life. And one task of the 
ordinary preacher or teacher in the Christian Church is simply 
the translation of ideas from his own semi-professional dialect 
into that of the semi-educated, or, if you choose to call them 
so, the illiterate. They will often be found surprisingly re- 
ceptive if the translation is properly done. They will not 
object to definite doctrine, provided that it is not flung at 
them from a desk. For here also is that old philosophy of 
Plato true, the philosophy that bubbles up, for example, in the 
Phcedrus that light, the light of genuine knowledge, breaks 
commonly from co-operation and friendly intercourse between 
man and man, rather than from books which cannot be cross- 
questioned. Such people can be reached. But we have no 
right to assume that our bookish categories and methods will 
give them the sound thought which they desire or need. 

In this preliminary sense of the term, bookless religion 
represents one phase or temper in our civilisation which will 
instantly be recognised by all who have to work, either in 
politics or in education, among the masses and the classes of 
this country. If it seems to be less carefully recognised by 
the Church, the fault is due, fundamentally, to the fact that 
her relation to the written Scriptures offers a special temptation 
to the exaggeration which is known as bookishness or intel- 
lectualism. Christianity has never been the religion of a book 
precisely as Judaism and Islam have been. At certain periods 
in her history the Church has indeed magnified the functions 
of Scripture to the pitch almost of an untruth, and there will 
always be sections, especially in the reformed Churches, which 
are disposed to regard the written Word with a slavish homage 
which is as unhistorical as it is illegitimate. Against such 
extremes the general sense of the Church, however, has main- 
tained a sound position on the whole. Even the preference 



166 THE HIBBERT JOURNAL 

for oral tradition which characterised Papias may be taken as 
a first phase of that healthy bookless religion which has ever 
accompanied the use of the Scriptures in the Church. The 
historical reasons which justified the Bishop of Hierapolis in 
his well-known practice I shall not discuss in this address. 
He has been often censured by his critics, from Eusebius 
downwards ; indeed, to judge from the casual extant fragments 
of his expositions, we are inclined if not entitled almost to 
reckon him as the first, though not the last, bishop who would 
have done better to talk less and read more. The living oral 
tradition on which he prided himself was far from being central 
or reliable at all points. It was a stream which carried many 
thin straws and dead leaves. Besides, his attitude towards 
it was hopelessly uncritical. His method was spoiled by his 
credulity. But he did feel, with many Christians, nearer to 
the current of faith in listening to reminiscences of the 
original disciples than in reading ; and this was due, partly 
to a distrust of the legal associations gathering round the 
lit era scripta, and partly owing to the fact that it seemed 
safer and more appropriate to propagate the worship and faith 
of Jesus in the communities of the Church than by recourse to 
written records of One who Himself wrote nothing. In any 
case, preaching existed and flourished before the New Testa- 
ment arose or was crystallised into the canon. As Dr C. R. 
Gregory eloquently puts it, in his recent volume on The Canon 
and Text of the New Testament (pp. 44-45), "The Christian 
Church is more than a book. Jesus was more than a word. 
Jesus, the Logos, the Word, was the Life, and the Church is a 
living society, a living fellowship. Our connection with Jesus, 
which reaches now over more than eighteen hundred years, 
does not rest upon the fact that He wrote something down, 
which one man and another, one after another, has read and 
believed until this very day. . . . Christianity began with the 
joining of heart to heart. Eye looked into eye. The living 
voice struck upon the living ear. And it is precisely such a 
uniting of personalities, such an action of man on man, that 



BOOKLESS RELIGION 167 

ever since Jesus spoke has effected the unceasing renewal of 
Christianity. Christianity has not grown to be what it is, 
has not maintained itself and enlarged itself, by reason of books 
being read no, not even by reason of the Bible's being read 
from generation to generation. The Christian, whether a 
clergyman or a layman, has sought with his heart after the 
hearts of his fellow-men. A mother has whispered the word 
to her child, a friend has spoken it in the ear of his friend, a 
preacher has proclaimed it to his hearers, and the child, the 
friend, the hearers have believed and become Christians. 
Christianity is an uninterrupted life." 

This is a vital conception which must be held tenaciously 
by all who realise the supreme religious value of Scripture for 
the work and worship of the Church. They, more than others, 
need this reminder of what the Scripture presupposes. Their 
temptation is to identify what is Biblical with what is Christian, 
and, by a recoil from the subordination of Scripture to the 
normal interests of the Church, to revert to a more or less 
doctrinaire view of the Bible and its contents. Against this 
tendency to stereotype revelation upon bookish lines there 
has been no lack of just protests from the ranks of the faithful. 
Many of these will occur at once to your minds. Their 
common standpoint has been the conviction that the Bible 
is always thrown out of focus when it is detached, by radical 
or by conservative, from the living fellowship of the Church, 
and that faith cannot be inspired or shaped wisely by Biblical 
appeals which fit texts together in a verbal mosaic. Jesus 
was not a scribe, and He has not chosen scribes to carry 
forward His faith. The Church did not make the New 
Testament, any more than the New Testament made the 
Church. Behind both lay the great redeeming facts and 
forces. These still operate, partly no doubt through the in- 
comparable and searching witness of Scripture, but never aside 
from that wider human experience, in relation to God's Spirit, 
which may be termed the bookless religion of the average 
individual. Faith, as the Ritschlians are never tired of 



168 THE HIBBERT JOURNAL 

teaching us, is reached and held, not by trying to throw 
ourselves back into the intellectual world of the apostles, but 
by yielding in our own lives, as they yielded in theirs, to the 
overpowering reality of God's revelation to man in Jesus 
Christ. The New Testament is the classical record of this 
divine revelation in history and experience, and of the human 
response to it from many sides. Hence the sound preaching 
of the New Testament must take into account this timeless 
and continuous soil of human life, into which the divine seed 
has to be dropped, studying its particular qualities and alive 
to the variety of its characteristic features. 

This aspect of " bookless religion," as the spontaneous, 
unformulated element in the Christian experience, may be 
corroborated by another definition which regards it as a sort 
of extra-mural preparation or predisposition for Christianity 
itself. Max M tiller, I recollect, employed the term in this 
connection, when he delivered the first series of the Gifford 
Lectures to us in the University of Glasgow. He laid great 
stress upon the struggle for eternal life through which the world 
and the individual pass, meaning apparently the aspirations 
and yearnings which are commonly classed under the title of 
Natural Religion. Without that struggle, he used to protest, 
" no religion, whatever its sacred books may be, will find in 
any human heart that soil in which alone it can strike root and 
on which alone it can grow and bear fruit. We must all have 
our bookless religion, if the sacred books, whatever these may 
be, are to find a safe and solid foundation within ourselves. No 
temple can stand without that foundation, and it is because 
that foundation is so often neglected that the walls of the 
temple become unsafe, and threaten to fall." This is, of 
course, an old idea as old as Paul's address to the Athenians : 
" What ye worship in ignorance, this set I forth to you." The 
varied moral instincts which grow up in the social context of 
our day, the special traditions and psychological climates, have 
all to be estimated carefully, if faith's appeal is to succeed. 
This " bookless religion," more or less unconscious of its needs, 



BOOKLESS RELIGION 169 

predisposes some to receive the fuller truth of Christ, and to 
root that truth in the soil of their own experience. Deep calls 
to deep. The depth of the Biblical witness answers to the 
depth of these private feelings in the extra-mural life. 

Now, all this bears upon our preaching and teaching with 
a force that is not always valued at its due. For no religious 
propaganda which is mainly made up out of the letter of the 
Bible and of books about the Bible will be effective in the 
best sense of the term. That rollicking and saintly Irishman, 
Father Dolling, once remarked that the Oxford Movement, 
for all its excellence, suffered from being "made up out of 
books." Dolling was no theologian ; but he was deeply 
read in certain volumes of human nature which were sealed 
books to men like Newman and Keble, and his apparently 
superficial criticism carries a truth whose significance applies 
widely to religious efforts. What Dolling felt was the 
" academic " taint. All great religious movements have been 
accompanied by a serious zest for sound learning and instruc- 
tion ; but to propagate religion among the extra-mural classes, 
a much more efficient vehicle must be found than any recourse, 
merely or mainly, to Biblical investigations, valuable as these 
are in their place. One condition of progress in such matters 
must be the power of speaking in the dialect of the market- 
place, as well as of the study, the frank recognition of 
" bookless religion," i.e. of the unformulated, undogmatic, 
untechnical religious feeling or, if you will, religious 
capacity which lies latent in human nature, and which 
demands more than severely intellectual methods if it is to 
be reached and won for the definite, saving gospel of the 
Spirit in Jesus Christ. The average religious consciousness 
is far more elusive and versatile and human than is dreamt 
of in the philosophy of the academic or doctrinaire spirit. 
Abstract discussions leave it only puzzled, and that sense of 
bewilderment condemns the preacher. The bookless man 
of religion occupies the seat of the unlearned. If he does 
not understand what the preacher is saying, it will not do 



170 THE HIBBERT JOURNAL 

for the latter to shift all the blame from his own shoulders. 
What Paul told the enthusiast at Corinth applies equally 
to the modern pulpit devotee of the academic spirit. He, 
after all, is responsible for the failure to understand the message. 
While it is one duty of the Christian minister to realise 
this principle by safeguarding himself against any intrusion of 
the academic spirit into the ordinary statement of the Church's 
faith, yet, in two other ways, the just needs of this "bookless 
religion" have to be satisfied, especially by ourselves in 
Scotland. One is a wise and reverent enrichment of our 
worship, which refuses to believe that simplicity is equivalent 
to bareness. I merely note this and pass on to the other, which 
is a habit of developing the conception and practice of fellow- 
ship in the church. A congregation is not an audience. It is 
not a fortuitous concourse of human atoms drawn together 
weekly by curiosity or admiration. Worship must not be 
degraded to the level of attendance at a lecture or a concert. 
The common activities and interests of the Church as a brother- 
hood must be promoted, if the full requirements of human 
nature are to be satisfied in the religious sphere, for it is there, 
as nowhere else, by co-operation for common ends, that 
Christianity can be learnt in its due range. " If we wish to 
become exact and fully furnished in any subject of teaching 
which is diversified and complicated, we must consult the 
living man and listen to his living voice. The general principles 
of any study you may learn at home by books : but the detail, 
the colour, the tone, the air, the life which makes it live in us, 
you must catch all these from those in whom it lives already." 
These words of Newman were meant for university life, but 
they can be applied directly to our present subject. They 
illustrate the cardinal principle for which I am contending 
here, that the Christian religion in practice is not a Levitical 
reproduction of first or second century ideas, but a spontaneous 
growth, which, however nourished and guided by the classical 
traditions and scriptures of the past, catches its full life 
from the common fellowship, the social responsibilities, the 



BOOKLESS RELIGION 171 

mutual enterprise and self-sacrifice, which throb within the 
vital intercourse of contemporary faith. 

The fact is, once this principle of " bookless religion " is 
recognised, its ramifications disclose themselves in all direc- 
tions. It is a factor which we find operating in many spheres. 
One of the really hopeful signs in recent Biblical criticism has 
been a truer appreciation of it in dealing with the early Chris- 
tian documents. Here, as in the newer movements of research 
into Greek and Roman religion, the ultra-literary bias is being 
corrected, and more allowance made for the existence of a 
normal, popular, voiceless religion within the early Churches 
than was common in the criticism of last century, when, for 
example, a dogmatic system of so-called " Paulinism " was 
tacitly assumed by many to sum up the central current of 
the primitive faith. On this aspect of the problem I have 
not time to dwell at present. But I should like to add one 
word upon a cognate subject in which the recognition of 
"bookless religion" has a real significance; and that is the 
modern passion for generalising, from statistics and schedules, 
upon the quality or the spread of personal religion. Evidence 
of this kind, we ought to bear in mind, is extremely difficult 
to secure. It is not often gained by dredging even the litera- 
ture of religious autobiography, for the perennial question of 
the historian arises, How far is any writer a true exponent of 
his age or even of his circle ? We can get literature for our 
own age, or for a past age. But is it representative, and, if 
so, to what extent ? As a rule, one will do well to entertain 
a wholesome scepticism of conclusions based upon induction 
from purely literary sources. The eccentric or the exceptional 
finds voice more readily than the normal. The latter does not 
pass into utterance so directly. The divorce court and the novel 
afford no clue to the number of happy marriages in a country ! 
Besides, in literature, as in life, the most vocal is not always 
the most dominant; it is one thing to be visible, another 
thing to be vital. There is a bookless religion whose presence 
in the genuine, general life of the age vitiates many neat and 



172 THE HIBBERT JOURNAL 

sure estimates of the period which are drawn mainly if not 
entirely from the delusive evidence of contemporary writings 
delusive because it is partial or fragmentary. 

Finally, such facts and factors as we have been reviewing 
converge upon our conception of what the Christian ministry 
is designed to be and to do. A trained ministry has usually 
been at least the ideal of the Scottish Churches, on the 
excellent principle that vital Christianity suffers whenever the 
religious consciousness is allowed to fall apart from the 
general intellectual advance of the age. Against such an 
ideal there is no law. We assume it as an axiom of our 
discipline. But the very glory of our training brings its own 
temptations. That training for about eight years tends to 
pre-occupy our mind with books. Biblical learning is, during 
our college course, the be-all and end-all. And its danger is 
intellectualism or bookishness. Some students, unfortunately, 
need no inoculation against the malady. Others have the 
sense to protect themselves, by clinical work in missions, 
against this pestilence of the academic spirit. But even the 
most wary may be none the worse of a gentle reminder that 
the people for whom he is responsible do not live in a world 
of documents alone, even of Biblical documents, that neat 
arrangements of texts will not fathom the depths of human 
need, and that, if the Church is to discharge her full debt to 
the barbarian as well as to the Greek, to the unlettered and 
unliterary class as well as to the reading public, she must 
present her faith in ways free from needlessly technical phrase- 
ology and preach the saving word without suggesting the 
bondage of an unelastic text. Men are not " dumb, driven 
cattle." They will not be driven, by the strong rods of argu- 
ment or of mere authority, into any pen of conviction. Even 
when they may be thus forced to yield some intellectual assent, 
or at any rate to silence any outward protest, they remain 
"of the same opinion still." Neither the theologian nor the 
evangelist wins a success worth mentioning by such argu- 
mentative processes of appeal. And, as a matter of fact, in 



BOOKLESS RELIGION 173 

this age of journalism, when the practical principles of any 
subject are scattered far and wide, the professional theologian 
no longer possesses an unchallenged monopoly. Sooner or 
later, no doubt, the deciding factors will be those of sure, first- 
hand experts, who have made it their business to know the 
subject in its ultimate principles. But the trend of modern 
religious thought is controlled by considerations which too 
often escape the abstruse thinker in theology, considerations 
which appeal powerfully to ordinary, people because their 
practical experience affords a ready verification of such pre- 
judices or instincts. In a word, the bookless religion of our 
day furnishes one of the conditions under which our work has 
to be done. Failure to allow for it adequately is responsible, 
I am afraid, for much of the inefficiency of our work as theo- 
logians and preachers. We take more trouble to know the 
Word than to master the conditions under which alone we can 
make it audible. The minds we address are pre-occupied. 
We ought to know what they are thinking and how they are 
thinking. This does not imply that their methods and aims 
of thought in religion are invariably accurate. Far from it. 
But we cannot hope to awaken a true conception of faith, or 
to direct the conscience aright, unless we are prepared, first of 
all, to get access to the life as it lies before us. " It would 
be almost incredible," says Frank Osbaldistone in Rob Roy, 
" to tell the rapidity of Miss Vernon's progress in knowledge ; 
and it was still more extraordinary, when her stock of mental 
acquisitions from books was compared with her total ignorance 
of actual life. It seemed as if she saw and knew everything 
except what passed in the world around her." This combina- 
tion probably made Di Vernon irresistibly fascinating as a 
talker. But while knowledge of books and ignorance of the 
bookless world are accomplishments which together may pro- 
duce a charming angel in the house, I am perfectly certain that 
they will turn out an extremely ineffective angel of the Lord. 

JAMES MOFFATT. 

BROUGHTY FERRY, N.B. 



EVANGELICAL BARGAINING. 
JOHN PAGE HOPPS. 

THE modern movement in favour of a frank dealing with the 
Bible and Evangelical Theology has reached the National 
Council of Evangelical Free Churches, which, we are glad to 
hear, has decided to enter the arena with a series of books on 
" Christian Faith and Doctrine." The series is to be edited by 
the Rev. F. B. Meyer, and the writers include Dr R. F. 
Horton, Professor Peake, Principal Adeney, the Rev. J. 
Scott Lidgett and others. The first of the series, just out, is 
by Dr J. Monro Gibson, and is on the crucial subject of The 
Inspiration and Authority of Holy Scripture. 

It is pretty evident that the book has been forced into 
existence by the pressure of a certain " distress" which is very 
widespread, and which is confessed here by such ominous 
phrases as " Multitudes of our teachers and preachers, truly 
religious men, are crying out, ' Would God I had a definite 
creed for my mind, and a positive gospel to preach 1 " " There 
were never so many, in all the history of the Church, crying 
out, ' Where am I ? ' as there are to-day." " There are 
multitudes of good, earnest souls who do love the light, but 
have been forced into unbelief by the cruel demand that they 
must accept every word of the Bible as coming direct from 
God, or reject the whole." 

Hence this book, for which Dr Forsyth writes a piquant 
introduction, in which he strives to call off the men of the 
" Higher Criticism," and pleads for the calling in of critics 
whom he quaintly names " the capable middle-men," who are 

174 



EVANGELICAL BARGAINING 175 

to act as mediators " between the learned and the public." It is 
a curious revelation as to the present position. " The army of 
research," he says, " is sufficiently well recruited. Its van has 
been going faster than the main body can follow, and becom- 
ing detached from its evangelical base " : so he proposes a 
quickened pace from the rear, and a halting or harking back of 
the van, in order to link up the old evangelical position with 
the new scholarly one, and thus secure rest for perturbed 
spirits ; and this book of Dr Gibson's is one of the links, and 
its writer is certified, by Dr Forsyth, as a " capable middle- 
man " a man who has to stand between the world of modern 
knowledge, on the one hand, and the world of traditional 
religion on the other, and mediate between them. " The 
premises are being rebuilt," he says, " but the business must 
be carried on." Was there ever such a naive and illuminating 
confession ? 

That is the position, then, to-day the middle-man 
carries on the business, pending entire reconstruction ; and he 
does it for the Bible in this book. One therefore expects a 
good deal of bargaining and contriving ; a good deal, too, of 
accommodation and management ; and this is what we get, 
with only a show of finality, but a show of finality which is 
made the most of. In fact, it is the part of "the capable 
middle-man " to persuade the customers that there is a great 
change, and yet that it all comes to the same thing. 

In a book of compromise, involving movement in a once 
tabooed direction, we might have expected a suitable modesty 
and a genial reference to the old advance guard ; but Dr 
Gibson fails us here. Curiously enough, though himself only 
coming in with the tide, he blames those who floated in long 
ago and are moored. One might have thought that he would 
have a good word, perhaps even a word of gratitude, for those 
who, under great difficulties, long ago showed the way into 
the harbour ; but there is, instead, a good deal of open or 
implied rebuke. 

Thus, Dr Martineau, who, as Dr Gibson says, in his Seat 



176 THE HIBBERT JOURNAL 

of Authority, "finds the ultimate seat of authority in the voice 
of God as responded to by the human heart and conscience," is 
said to "assume a position which practically sets aside as 
worthless the witness of prophets and apostles, and the ac- 
cumulated experience and witness of the Church." Does Dr 
Gibson deliberately regard that as fair ? 

But, as to Bible critics generally, he is unfair if they go 
an inch farther than himself. Of these he says : " They have 
their difficulties about miracles, about the future life, about 
the course of nature and the providence of God ; and, because 
their Christian friends cannot clear these all up to them in 
the space of ten minutes or half an hour, they will not listen 
to anything our Lord and Master may say." That may be 
excused as pulpit emotion or pulpit rhetoric (and there is a 
good deal of both in this book), but it will not bear reflection. 
Of another, who finds that he has been deceived about the 
infallibility of the Bible, he says : " So he gives up the Bible 
because it is not what he thought it to be, and then, having 
given up the Bible, he concludes as a matter of course that 
he must give up Christ." What nonsense ! Might it not 
more naturally occur to this honest and enlightened person 
to rally to Christ more resolutely, and to let the Old Testament 
atrocities go ? 

But Dr Gibson now and then plays the part of the 
" capable middle-man " excellently well, by pointing out to 
the hesitator that, after all, dark purple is very much like 
light brown. Thus, towards the end of his bargaining, he 
says : " How is it that the Bible of the simplest saints will 
be well worn and thumbed, perhaps actually torn, at the 
Psalms and in Gospels, and the page quite clean in Leviticus 
and Esther ? It is because they are higher critics. And their 
criticism is perfectly just"; and he adds: "Whatever does 
not stand in times like these is better gone " ; and he also 
adds, almost as his last words, as though to clinch a bargain : 
" Though the old theory was that the Bible was all equally 
inspired * from cover to cover,' as the phrase is, it was only 



EVANGELICAL BARGAINING 177 

a theoretical, not a practical, belief. Even the most stalwart 
defenders of the theory have not acted on it ; or, if the 
attempt was made, as in the writer's case, it was soon given 
over as impracticable. For, however resolutely one may set 
himself to go through the whole Bible chapter by chapter, 
there are considerable portions of it which to the ordinary 
reader are a hopeless puzzle." 

But, true to his role as " middle-man," he turns to the 
advanced critic and says : " In regard to the divine revelation, 
there can surely be no place for the fault-finding critic. Shall 
anyone find fault with 'the light of the knowledge of the 
glory of God'?" an almost comical begging of the question 
which no experienced commercial " middle-man " would think 
plausible. 

Dr Gibson's method is a very simple one. He deals with 
the Bible very much as a bold salesman might deal with a 
roll of cloth, moth-eaten here and there. He proposes to 
take what he calls "the telescopic," not "the microscopic" 
view. His argument is, " It is all right on the whole." He 
treats the book as one might treat Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, 
concentrating attention upon its general unity, its underlying 
history, and its philosophy of life, with an expert's hiding of 
its gross animalism, its wicked stories, and its occasional 
blasphemy. He may not know it, but he does it ; and this 
refuge, of the view on the whole, with a large placing of 
unpleasant things in the background, is practically Dr Gibson's 
case. By means of it he contrives, with a good deal of pulpit 
rhetoric, to find a certain "progressive revelation" in the 
Bible. Of course, he quotes the Epistle to the Hebrews : 
" God, who at sundry times and in divers manners spake in 
time past unto the fathers by the prophets, hath in these days 
spoken unto us by his Son." What, then, are we to under- 
stand by God speaking to the prophets ? The answer is that 
God called " an elect nation " "to receive and convey to the 
world His message of salvation," and then "individual men 

selected and empowered by the agency of His Spirit to make 
Voi, VII. No. 1. 12 



178 THE HIBBERT JOURNAL 

the message articulate the witness of all converging on Him 
who is the Word of God, and by whose sacrifice alone the 
world can be redeemed." 

This is Dr Gibson's case. The Gospel message, "dimly 
foreshadowed, perhaps, in the story of the Fall," grew " clearer 
and clearer as we come down the ages, till it blazes out in 
Christ." "See there, first," he cries, with another flash of 
pulpit fervour " see there, first, the long line of prophets, 
everyone of them with a light in his eye and a fire in his 
soul, as, with a forward pointing, he says: 'The Christ is 
coming, the Christ of God is coming." 1 And yet, after all, 
there is not one of these prophets who is concerned with any- 
thing but the social, political, and ethical problems and events 
of his own day 1 But, if all this is so, if all who went before 
Christ were God-guided witnesses to Him, how came it to 
pass that Christ Himself said, " All that came before me were 
thieves and robbers " ? The prophets were not, perhaps, dis- 
tinctly in His mind, but the assertion is a very sweeping one : 
if, indeed, He ever said it at all. 

But now, as to this claim that God chose the Jewish people 
" to receive and convey to the world His message of salvation," 
we must pause and think before we again admit this venerable 
theory. Again and again Dr Gibson hammers at it. He 
says, " The first fact we have to deal with is that of an elect 
and inspired people a nation singled out from other nations 
to receive God's special redemptive revelation and to give it 
to the world " ; and this nation, he does not hesitate to say, 
was specially distinguished for its "abiding consciousness of 
the immanence and transcendence of God," its "quenchless 
passion for righteousness," and its growth of "a lofty 
spirituality." It takes a good deal of emotion mixed with 
management to say this, and prove it in face of the history 
of this idolatrous and God-forsaking people, though much of 
what he attributes to the nation was true of some of its 
habitually rejected ethical and religious reformers whom we 
call "prophets." 



EVANGELICAL BARGAINING 179 

Dr Gibson contrasts the religion of the Hebrews with that 
of Greece and Rome, which, he says, was " * of the earth, 
earthy,' sadly stained all through by the evil imaginations 
of the heart of man." But is this less true of the Hebrews ? 
" God spoke to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob," says Dr Gibson ; 
" and think," he cries, " what He did for the heroes of the Old 
Testament ! Think what He did for Abraham, Isaac, and 
Jacob. Think what He did for Joseph and through Joseph. 
Think what he did for Moses and through Moses. Think 
what He did through Joshua and the Judges and the 
Kings." Is it all really good history, then ? But what of 
the heroic characters of even our own little island ? Has not 
God " done great things for us, whereof we are glad " ? and, 
if the story of our heroes and of our heroic days is less blended 
with assertions of God's championship, that may only show a 
more modest and more elevated thought of God ; for truly, 
the heroic characters of the Old Testament, or their chroniclers, 
imputed things to God which we have to contradict on His 
behalf. Dr Gibson says : " By a mighty hand and an out- 
stretched arm God did bring His people out of Egypt." And 
did not the men of Holland say that God with His mighty 
hand delivered them from the grasp of Spain? And 
Englishmen have said it of England too. But even one of 
the old Hebrew prophets rose above this provincialism when 
he said: "The God of the whole earth shall He be called." 
And Dr Gibson occasionally rises above it, as, for instance, 
when of the Scripture record he says quite frankly : "God 
was in it, of course, as He is in everything." This is 
an immense admission, and is an excellent example of the 
function of the " middle-man." After all, inspiration, and 
the guidance of God, and the leading of the Holy Spirit, 
are only matters of degree. 

It therefore follows, and Dr Gibson quite frankly admits 
it, that the various parts of the Bible are not at all on " the 
same level." Within his limits, he is as outspoken as any 
Unitarian in his repudiation of the old " evangelical " view that it 



180 THE HIBBERT JOURNAL 

is all alike infallible and literally true. The Bible, he says, is 
not one book, but sixty-six, and many things are doubtful as 
to their authors, for instance, and as to whether all of them 
ought to be included in the Canon of inspired books. There 
is the Book of Esther, for example ; and Dr Gibson often 
glances at Esther and shakes his head. It is true that Christ 
quotes the Old Testament, but " we have no means of knowing 
the mind of Christ or of His apostles as to the exact number 
of books to be included in the Bible." The Apocrypha is a 
part of the old Septuagint version, and Jesus " generally used " 
it, but " left no warning against treating the whole of it as 
authoritative " ; and yet " those who are acquainted with the 
Apocrypha will recognise what a relief it is to be free from 
the necessity of claiming special inspiration for all the books 
which it contains " ; and this is accompanied by many hints as 
to the relief now being felt when it is no longer necessary to 
claim equal inspiration for all parts of the Canon. 

The Bible, we are told, was not given to teach us history 
or science. We have " given that up " and are " willing to 
have the scope of Scripture teaching limited to the spiritual 
and the practical." " The entire history (of the Jews) from the 
entrance into Canaan down to the Captivity, a space of seven 
hundred years at least, comes to us, not only without any sign 
of a call or commission (to write the history), but without any 
means of finding out who the author was " ; and then we have 
the further suggestive remark that the literature of the world 
began with myth and legend. But a passage in Dr Gibson's 
naive little autobiography, with which he begins his book, 
throws the clearest light on his position, and, by implication, 
on the present position of the National Council of Evangelical 
Free Churches. He says : " I was brought up to believe that 
the whole fabric of our faith rested ultimately on the founda- 
tion of a book which, though written by many different authors, 
was yet from beginning to end not their work at all, but that 
of God. They were simply God's penmen, and what they 
wrote was at His dictation." Later on, he became perplexed, 



EVANGELICAL BARGAINING 181 

and found some help "in Kitto's books," but he had "an 
uncomfortable feeling that too much ingenuity had been needed, 
and that simple truth should scarcely require so very much 
special pleading." Then came what he calls the " sad experi- 
ence " of finding that " it was not all on the same level." Then 
he found relief in the notion that " the Bible was not itself the 
divine revelation, but the record of it," and in the further 
discovery of" the progressive nature of divine revelation." He 
confesses to having been at first strong in opposition to modern 
criticism, but he has come " out of the comparative darkness 
into better light." 

Thinking of men like Theodore Parker and Colenso, who 
went through the jungle before him, we cannot help being 
reminded of the story of a penitent old lady who, on her 
death-bed, said to her faithful old servant, " Ah, Sarah, I see 
I've been a wicked woman for many years," to which Sarah 
pathetically replied, " Lor, missus, we've known it all the 
while." 

So then, Dr Gibson, it will be perceived, has exceedingly 
interesting and elastic ideas about inspirations, and, if we 
venture to give a brief summary of his grading of them, we do 
so only as helping to carry on the business during the rebuild- 
ing of the premises, to use Dr Forsyth's remarkable phrase. 
Dr Gibson's grading of inspirations, then, comes out something 
like this : There is a broad sense in which we are all inspired. 
Then there are artists, poets, and musicians who are inspired 
in a higher or finer degree. Still higher, there is "spiritual 
inspiration," and this "again admits of degrees." Then, at 
last, we come to the inspiration of " those who were chosen of 
God to be the vehicles of that redemptive revelation which 
was to be the basis of fellowship with God through all suc- 
ceeding ages." All this would be acceptable enough if we 
turned the particular into a universal ; for the vital question 
is whether the revelation of God is one small chapter in the 
world's history or the whole of it. 

Amid all these difficulties, we are pathetically asked for 



182 THE HIBBERT JOURNAL 

" faith " ; but Dr Gibson has a beautifully childlike way of 
taking " faith " as meaning faith in his own particular explana- 
tions. He assures us that it is the inner vision which sees, 
and that it is this inner vision which is faith. In a sense that 
is quite true, but it was true for Luther and Newman, 
Channing and Spurgeon, just as it is true for R. J. Campbell 
and Munro Gibson, Wilberforce and Father Vaughan. Faith 
must be free, as Dr Gibson himself tells us, allowing a large 
margin for the personal equation, and going so far as to tell 
us that inspiration was purposely largely diluted with the 
human. If it had come upon us " with the impact of super- 
human power, would not human freedom be abolished ? " And 
yet he says : " Why should it be thought a thing incredible 
that God should lay upon us the responsibility of recognising 
His Gospel as it shines forth in the pages of the Bible ? " 
Well, but is it not quite as fully open to us to ask : "Why 
should it be thought a thing incredible that God should 
endow us with the sacred right to find an unholy spirit in 
certain pages of the Bible ? " 

Dr Gibson's answer to all this seems to be that we ought 
to accept the whole Bible as specially inspired, "because 
Christ is in it " ; and he certainly says, plainly enough, that 
" we may rest assured that if a man truly believes in Christ, 
he will not fail to rise to a worthy faith in the inspiration of 
the Scriptures." That is a very vague and elastic remark. 
" A worthy faith in the inspiration of the Scriptures " may 
mean such a faith in the Scriptures as they deserve ; and 
the sense of the whole might, to some honest readers, actually 
mean this : We may rest assured that in proportion as a man 
truly believes in Christ, he will be less inclined to believe 
in the special inspiration of many portions of the Old Testa- 
ment. Dr Gibson himself gives us specimens of these un- 
acceptable portions of "the Holy Scriptures" (though still, 
in some way, holding by their inspiration) ; but there are 
hundreds of them. They are well known, and we need not 
recite them ; but there is one which we cannot pass, because 



EVANGELICAL BARGAINING 183 

it illustrates how familiarity can breed devotion, and because 
it gives us a typical specimen of Dr Gibson's notion of a 
" contrast." 

" We may compare the Song of Moses with the almost 
contemporary hymn of the poet Pentaur, who is sometimes 
spoken of as the Homer of Egypt. . . . The one is full of 
man and his praises, while the other makes nothing of man 
and everything of God. The first three verses sufficiently 
indicate the tenor of the whole : ' I will sing unto the 
Lord, for He has triumphed gloriously : the horse and his 
rider hath he thrown into the sea. The Lord is my strength 
and song, and He is become my salvation. This is my God, 
and I will praise Him; my father's God, and I will exalt 
Him. The Lord is a man of war : the Lord is His name.' 

" Such is the strain of the Hebrew epic ; whereas, in the 
Egyptian one, the praises of Pharaoh are sung throughout, and 
when any god of Egypt is referred to, it is in some such 
fashion as this : 6 1 (Pharaoh) have built for thee Propyloea, 
wonderful works of stone ; I have raised to thee masts for all 
time ; I have conveyed the obelisks for thee from the island 
of Elephantine. It was I who had brought for thee the 
everlasting stone, who caused the ships to go for thee on the 
sea, to bring thee the products of foreign nations. Where has 
it been told that such a thing was done at any other time ? ' 
Comment," says Dr Gibson, " is needless on the contrast." 
Quite needless, but, if we made any comment, it would be 
strongly in favour of the Egyptian record over the Hebrew 
one. Both are largely inspired by boasting, but Pharaoh 
boasts of good things done in building and commerce, whereas 
the Hebrew boasts in a God who threw people into the sea, 
and who is " a man of war " : better is it to praise a useful man 
than a merciless God. It is curious to note that, all through, 
Dr Gibson's case. seems to be that a record is inspired if it 
refers to God, no matter what it says of Him. It is an old 
superstition, and anything but a lovely one. 

Impelled by this superstition, Dr Gibson might be com- 



184 THE HIBBERT JOURNAL 

pelled to include the Koran as a part of " The Holy Scrip- 
tures," but, being an Englishman, he is restrained by a 
patriotic claiming for his book the guarantee of the Holy 
Spirit, and he appears to claim the Holy Spirit for his inter- 
pretation of it. Of course he is aware that this is rather thin 
ice, but he does not falter. Of course, also, he is aware that 
there is a great and venerable claimant who holds that to him 
has been entrusted the revelation, as custodian and interpreter ; 
but he mentions that only to repudiate it ; and yet, in the 
absence of such a divinely appointed custodian and interpreter, 
there is nothing left but private judgment, with a resolute 
ruling out of all condemnation on account of adverse opinion. 
But Dr Gibson is very " capable," and confidently claims the 
Holy Spirit's guidance for his particular view ; and virtually 
denies the guidance of the Holy Spirit to all who do not 
accept that view. That is a bold stroke, in view of the fact 
that he has only just come within sight of it, that he is but 
coming in with the tide, and has by no means reached 
the pier. 

Is this reliance upon the Holy Spirit anything more than 
reliance upon the God-given sense of what is true and good 
a sense which has always varied, and must always vary, in its 
behests, in harmony with the stage of spiritual sensitiveness 
attained? Dr Gibson mentions Newman's Apologia. May 
we commend to him a curious parallel to his own following 
of the Holy Spirit's guidance. That following has led him to 
the occupation of a " capable middle-man," in order to recon- 
cile the stolid Nonconformist to the conclusion that the Bible 
is not all equally inspired ; but it led Newman into the Roman 
Catholic Church for the saving of his soul ; and, so far as we 
can see, Newman agonised more than he in his anxiety to be 
guided aright. Here are a few expressions taken from that 
wonderful and touching story of Newman's laborious pilgrim- 
age: "Pray believe that I am encompassed with responsi- 
bilities so great and so various as utterly to overcome me, 
unless I have mercy from Him who, all through my life, 



EVANGELICAL BARGAINING 185 

has sustained and guided me, and to whom I can now submit 
myself." 

" It suggests to me the traces of a Providential Hand." 
" I am a Catholic by virtue of my believing in God." 
" The question simply turns on the nature of the promise 
of the Spirit made to the Church." 

It is certainly interesting to turn from these ardent assur- 
ances within the pale, to Dr Gibson's equally ardent assurances 
in the open (unless, indeed, the " National Council of Evan- 
gelical Free Churches " is also a pale). " Verily," he says, 
"we cannot do without something above the written word, 
without the presence and guidance of the Spirit of Him who 
spake to the fathers by the prophets. There must be present 
inspiration to verify for us, and to enable us to make use of, 
the inspiration that is past. Do we not believe in the Holy 
Ghost?" "There is the final verification. There is the 
ultimate authority the Holy Spirit of God and of His Son 
Jesus Christ speaking, in the sacred Scriptures especially, to 
the consciences and hearts of those who are of the truth." 
But who are " of the truth " ? Are they only " of the truth " 
who agree with Dr Gibson ? It looks like it. 

Belief in endorsement by the "Holy Ghost" is an old 
source of trouble, and has always been the cause of much 
over-belief and excessive assertion. And yet there is a truth 
in it ; but it is a truth which puts Newman and Gibson side 
by side, and condemns neither ; and this truth will be found 
in a more modern, a more reasonable, and a more reverent 
conception of God than that which presents Him as a sort of 
exaggerated human being, selecting this man and that ; doing 
this and that, as He chooses, and usually as the champion of 
one side ; inspiring David and ignoring Socrates ; guiding 
Monro Gibson aright to Farringdon Street, and letting your 
anxious, trusting Newman grope his way to Rome alone. 
The truth is, that there is a God-side to every one of us, and 
that it is on this side of the spirit-self that conscience and the 
sense of duty operate ; so that a man is led by God when 



186 THE HIBBERT JOURNAL 

he is seeking the light, longing for truth, and hungering and 
thirsting for righteousness, though these may lead two men 
to opposite conclusions. 

In the light of this view of divine guidance, we can grant 
to Dr Gibson that every part of the Bible may be inspired in 
its degree. It is quite possible that the writers of the psalms 
which treat God as a fighting champion of the Jews, and a 
ruthless fighter too, were moved by zeal for God, and even 
by a rough kind of zeal for righteousness, as they understood 
it, and were to that extent inspired by the God in them : 
though it would often be difficult to call it inspiration by the 
"Holy "Spirit. 

This view of inspiration may appear to be paradoxical, but 
it does not seem possible to escape from it except by postulat- 
ing a humanly arbitrary God, and attributing to some men 
the power to discover that they are His chosen ones and 
not much good has come of that ! Newman's Apologia gives 
many a curious glimpse of this. In one place he suggests 
that it is one's duty "to throw oneself generously into that 
form of religion which is providentially put before one," and 
says boldly, " I have always contended that it mattered not 
where a man began, so that he began on what came to hand 
and in faith ; and that anything might become a divine 
method of truth." The rest is "divine guidance." 

But beneath this fencing with the notion of guidance by 
the Holy Spirit there is a serious fact which admits of no 
evading that we are all engaged in a great act of separation, 
and oscillating between Freedom and Authority, Fact and 
Assertion, Reason and Rome ; and Newman's struggle was 
precisely what Gibson's is, but in different directions. Newman 
said, " The spirit of lawlessness came in with the Reformation, 
and Liberalism is its offspring " ; and by " Liberalism " he meant 
pretty much what Dr Gibson has to bargain with as "The 
Higher Criticism." " There are but two alternatives," said 
Newman, " the way to Rome, and the way to Atheism : 
Anglicanism is the halfway house on the one side, and Liberal- 



EVANGELICAL BARGAINING 187 

ism is the halfway house on the other " ; and he ought to have 
known, for he was sure that all his life he had been " divinely 
guided." He predicted that "the stern encounter" would 
come, " when the two real and living principles, simple, entire, 
and consistent . . . rush upon each other, contending, not for 
names and words, or half- views, but for elementary notions and 
distinctive moral characters'*: and he adds a passage which, 
though a trifle scornful, amusingly illustrates the present 
balancing attitude of the men whom Dr Gibson represents : 
" In the present day, mistiness is the mother of wisdom. A 
man who can set down half a dozen general propositions, 
which escape from destroying one another only by being diluted 
into truisms ; who can hold the balance between opposites so 
skilfully as to do without fulcrum or beam ; who never enunci- 
ates a truth without guarding himself against being supposed 
to exclude the contradictory . . . this is what the Church is 
said to want, not party men, but sensible, temperate, sober, 
well-judging persons, to guide it through the channel of No- 
meaning, between the Scylla and Charybdis of Aye and No ! " 

Dr Gibson concludes with a pretty little story which will 
serve our purpose just as well as his : "I think of my little 
grandchild of eighteen months, who, having been taught by 
her father to blow out first a match and then a candle, made 
her next attempt on the orb of day, on an afternoon with just 
enough fog to make it possible for her to look straight at its 
great red ball. The dear child tried it again and again and 
again. And the sun is shining yet." 

Yes, " God's in the heavens," and He lights us all. But 
the trouble is that we are always being tempted to mistake 
our poor little candles for His " marvellous light." 

JOHN PAGE HOPPS. 



DISCUSSIONS 

N.B. The contributions under this heading refer to matters previously 
treated in the "Hibbert Journal." Reviews of books are not open 
to discussion. Criticism of any article will, as a rule, be limited to a 
single issue of the Journal. The discussion ends with a reply from 
the original writer. Ed. 

IS CIVILISATION IN DANGER? 

(Hibbert Journal, July 1908, p. 729.) 

THE somewhat startling title of the second article in the July issue of 
the Hibbert Journal could not fail to draw attention to it. The article 
itself, readable as it is, proves in effect disappointing. So much is assumed, 
so little proved. 

To take a few points briefly. It is assumed that there is a rapid decay 
of that liberal thought and finer feeling which constitute what is called 
" Culture," and that such decay is due partly to increasing specialisation 
in work, which cramps the intellect and quenches all aspiration, and partly 
to the passion for uniformity which " is assailing not only superiority of 
fortune and position, but every kind of superiority whatsoever." For both 
these tendencies, which ought to be much more carefully distinguished 
than is here the case, M. Gerard makes the Democracy responsible. He 
fears that "with the disappearance of social inequalities individual 
initiative will come to an end." For, in his judgment, Democracy is the 
enemy of Genius, which is " essentially anti-democratic." Education 
itself, he thinks, is becoming part of the machinery by which wealth is to 
be brought within the reach of all alike, and for all alike that is becoming 
the one goal of effort. In a word, he dreads that for the leisured thought 
by which life is enlarged and enriched, for the arts by which it is ennobled 
and refined, there will presently be no demand and no scope. And, since 
the foe is Democracy, and since the failure of the aristocracy of wealth and 
privilege is conspicuous, appeal is made to such " men of letters, artists, and 
women " as may have within them the spirit of genuine Culture, to band 
themselves together " in opposition to that universal mediocrity by which 
our civilisation is threatened " : to form themselves, in fact, into an 
aristocracy "of intellect, of feeling, and of manners." 

Surely there is much here open to question. 

That there is a note of vulgarity, a lack of distinction, in the general 

188 



DISCUSSIONS 189 

demeanour of the average citizen Frenchman, Englishman, or German is 
only too true. Our ideals for work, for recreation, and even for study are 
not very lofty, and many seem to have no ideals at all. But were things 
any better a generation ago ? I trow not ; unless, indeed, we compare the 
cultivated few of a previous age with the general mass of the population 
to-day, which is apparently the method of this article. What is indis- 
putable is, that the general mixing of classes, which is the outcome of 
democratic progress, has made sensitive people feel more keenly than before 
how low is the standard of our attainment as a people. But the 
Democracy, only now beginning to assert itself, must not be made wholly 
responsible for deficiencies which are, partly at least, the outcome of 
aristocratic rule ; and the remedy will hardly be found by deliberately 
instituting a new aristocracy of superior persons. Indeed, it strikes one as 
rather odd, that a gentleman whose ideal of culture is expressed in the 
motto " nihil humanum a me alienum puto" and who finds the chief 
obstacle to the realisation of his ideal in the specialising tendencies of 
modern work, should take alarm at the progress of Democracy. For, in 
the first place, it is by no means certain that the real trend of practical 
life is towards the emphasising of such injurious specialising : Mr H. G. 
Wells gives some good reasons for thinking otherwise. And, in the next 
place, if specialisation be a danger for the future, as it undoubtedly is in 
some respects a present evil, is not the Democracy, or at all events the 
Socialists, who are the advanced wing, up in arms against it? The 
clamour of the labouring man for shorter hours, if not consciously a 
demand for nobler training, is at all events a plea for larger opportunity, 
for the possibility of doing or hearing or seeing something outside the 
routine of his monotonous day^s work. 

Monotony, let us note, is what M. Gerard especially dreads " the 
monotony of a universal mediocrity," which is to result from " democratic 
pressure on the one hand and material progress on the other."" He laments 
that machinery is turning out, for the use of poor people, houses, clothing, 
furniture, amusements, and even education, after the very same patterns 
in vogue among the wealthy, observing with dismay that the middle and 
lower classes show no more taste or originality than their social superiors. 
He draws in grey tints a depressing picture of a London suburb, and finds 
in the dulness of the streets sad evidence that the occupants of these 
dwellings " are absolutely impervious to every idea and to the highest type 
of culture. 1 " Let us pity these people indeed, if, as is so naively assumed, 
none of them ever rise in spirit above their surroundings. But what about 
Grosvenor Square or Grosvenor Place, or the uninspiring exterior of 
Buckingham Palace ? Must the levelling Democrats take the blame for 
the lack of initiative there ? 

But below these secondary causes of decay, the writer discerns a deeper 
cause, which is moral the love of money. " Utilitarian interests are on 
the eve of causing all that lies beyond them to be forgotten." And here 
comes in the gist of his argument. While, "in material respects, the 



190 THE HIBBERT JOURNAL 

levelling of society is especially evident in the slow ascent of the masses 
to better conditions " (which, as it would appear, he grudgingly allows), " in 
moral and intellectual respects, on the contrary, it is being realised by the 
lowering of the elite to a uniform level with the rest." But who are the 
elite thus degraded ? Either they must be individuals highly placed who 
never utilised their wealth and leisure to cultivate higher interests, or else 
we must infer that men of high birth and breeding succumb as easily to 
vulgar influences as baser folk. What, then, comes of his appeal to the 
better sort to form themselves into a brotherhood, an aristocracy of all 
the virtues, to rescue a perishing civilisation ? Does not the very sugges- 
tion imply a misapprehension of the way in which intellect and merit 
exalt and purify the life of Man ? Good men and wise hitherto have 
uplifted and ennobled their fellows, not by electing themselves to high 
office as the legitimate leaders of the nation, but by giving freely of the 
spiritual treasures they possessed without respect to persons or classes. 
When they are concerned to assume a privileged position and to exercise 
authority, they begin to lose something of their spiritual power. That is 
the history of churches and schools of art the world over. Yet something 
of this sort is implied in M. Gerard's appeal, since his call to the men of 
mind and character to champion " the prerogatives of talent and merit " 
is bound up with, nay, made subordinate to, his contention that social 
inequalities are a necessary condition of civilisation, that we must have an 
aristocracy. I would submit, on the contrary, that, attractive as the idea 
is, presented in abstract terms, an aristocracy of the most excellent persons, 
deliberately established and formed into a privileged class, would prove in 
practice a fiasco. They would inevitably degenerate into a selfish clique. 
Such, indeed, has been the actual experience of mankind. Pharisaism is a 
typical instance, beginning, as it did, in an honest and whole-hearted zeal 
for righteousness. But every aristocracy, however established, has claimed 
to be in some sense the exponent of virtue and refinement. Its members 
must always be " gentlemen " ; and the tradition of gentility, where pre- 
served in its purity, is no ignoble thing. But (teste M. Gerard) it is fast 
disappearing. And the reason is not far to seek. It has been a selfish 
tradition. These worthy and refined gentlefolk have not shared their 
treasure with their fellow-citizens of a lower social grade, but have kept 
them at armVlength as "common people." And now the nemesis has 
come upon the gentlemen, in that those whom they despised are pushing 
forward, and that their lack of good breeding is felt as painful. 

I submit, then, that it is futile to deplore the passing away of social 
distinctions. The levelling process will go farther, whether we will or 
no. The masses will not ask the best people always to take the first place, 
and will probably, following the example of the higher classes, put some of 
them down at the bottom. But if, indeed, as the Scriptures suggest to us, 
spiritual excellence works as a leaven, permeating the social body, they will 
be able to work even there quite effectively, as, in fact, some of them are 
working now. The motto of true genius in art and literature, as well 



DISCUSSIONS 191 

as in morals and religion, has ever been : " I am among you as he that 
serveth." 

Two very important considerations which, if duly weighed, must have 
greatly modified his judgments, are by the writer of this paper most 
strangely ignored. The one is the fact that, quite apart from the not too 
generous help given by those in high place, there has always been a leaven 
of righteousness, and even of refinement, working among the masses, 
unobserved because unpretentious, but none the less effective for good. 
The other (the outcome of this) is the fact that the aristocracy of 
enlightened and right-minded persons, to whom as a body actually existing 
M. Gerard appeals, is itself constantly recruited from below. 

WILLIAM C. STEWART. 
KENSINGTON. 



SCIENCE AND THE PURPOSE OF LIFE. 

(Hibbert Journal, July 1908, p. 743.) 

DR NANSEN writes : " We see now that really nothing we behold has a 
beginning or an end, and that therefore the only logical view of the 
Universe, based upon our own experience, is that it is infinite in time and 
space. It always has existed, and will go on for ever. It has no limits, 
but extends infinitely in all directions."" But can that view of the Universe 
be " logical " which is inconceivable and self-contradictory. That the 
Universe has never had a beginning and will never have an end is as 
inconceivable and self-contradictory, as it is inconceivable and self-contra- 
dictory that it had a beginning and will have an end, as Kant showed long 
ago in his first Antinomy. " Illimitable space " and the " star-spangled 
heavens " are known to us only as phenomena. What they are apart from 
ourselves, or if they exist apart from ourselves, we do not know. If, 
however, " science " be right, the question is not merely, What is the 
purpose of life ? but, What is the purpose of the Universe ? Apparently it 
exists only that at stated intervals there should be " glorious collisions " 
collisions which, however " glorious," there will be no one to observe in the 
case of our solar system, as, long ere it takes part in a "collision," all 
sentient life will have disappeared, and have been " wiped out as a dream 
of the past." To hold that the Universe has slowly evolved, that man 
after ages of struggle and suffering should have reached his present con- 
dition, and then after some millions of years which yet are as nothing in 
comparison with infinite time, should slowly devolve until he ceases to 
exist, merely in order that it and he should form part of a " glorious 
collision," is to deny that the Universe and human life have any purpose 
whatever. Still, if this be our destiny, we must face it. The only question 
is, What manner of men should we be, and what should we do ? Dr 



192 THE HIBBERT JOURNAL 

Nansen replies, " Be as happy as possible, and develop yourselves to the 
utmost." " Be as happy as possible " is good advice. Carpe diem is the 
highest wisdom, if the conclusions of science are true. Though whether 
happiness be possible when we know that every tick of the clock is carrying 
us towards blank negation is another question. It will probably depend 
on temperament. But why should we develop ourselves? Is it worth 
while to do so when in a few short years, in comparison with infinite time, 
we ourselves and finally all of us and all our achievements will be " wiped 
out as a dream of the past/' 

" What the philosophies, all the sciences, poesy, varying voices of prayer, 
All that is noblest, all that is basest, all that is filthy, all that is fair, 
What is it all, if all of us end but in being our own corpse coffins at last, 
Swallowed in vastness, lost in silence, drowned in the deeps of a meaning- 
less past." 

If it be replied, Develop yourself, because by so doing you will increase 
your own happiness and that of others, the answer is Why should I think 
of others, and why should I develop myself if I am already as happy as I 
can conceive myself to be, undeveloped ? It is useless to tell me that I 
should be happier if I was unselfish, and should develop myself. I can 
reply that others may take that view of happiness if they will, but I am 
quite content to remain as I am. As I am already as happy as I can imagine 
possible. I have fulfilled my " one duty " of making the most of this life 
and of being " as happy as possible." 

If the naturalist view of the world be true, to make the most of this life 
is wise and prudent : to talk of it being a duty is absurd. And everyone 
has a perfect right to make the most of this life in his own way. If A 
thinks he can make the most of this life in drunkenness and B in self- 
sacrifice, the naturalist view must regard both as equally good. B has no 
right to claim that his manner of life is higher and better than that of A. 
It is higher and better for B. But he has no right to say that it would 
be the same for A ; and if he try to convince A that self-sacrifice and 
unselfishness are better than drunkenness, A can reply, We are both agreed 
that we should make the most of this life and be as happy as possible 
you find your happiness in self-sacrifice, while I find it in drunkenness. 
Both of us are thus making the most of life and fulfilling our " one duty," 
and what right have you to say that your mode of making the most of 
this life is better than mine ? If B should reply that A ought to think of 
others, and that his drunkenness lessens their happiness on the naturalist 
view, A can reply, Why should he think of others ? Is it worth while for 
him to sacrifice his own happiness for beings so ephemeral as they ? Why 
should he detract from his own happiness to add to theirs, whose loss of 
happiness or even whose misery are but "passing trifles," and therefore 
" not so very important after all " ? How, indeed, can he be certain that 
by giving up his own happiness for the sake of others, he is not lessening 
instead of increasing the sum of happiness in the world ? How can he be 



DISCUSSIONS 193 

certain that the loss of happiness on his part is not greater than the happi- 
ness his unselfishness may confer on others ? He cannot be certain, and 
therefore, if his " one duty " is " to be as happy as possible " and to make 
the most of this life, his wisest plan is to look after himself, and to think 
of others only so far as they are a means to his happiness. On the 
naturalist view all moral distinctions and all appeals on moral grounds 
disappear. 

Dr Nansen seems to think that the one test of greatness is mere size. 
If we want to learn to be modest, to be convinced of our own insignificance, 
and to find comfort for all the ills of life, we need only contemplate the 
" star-spangled heavens " and reflect upon the infinity of space. Whether 
a patient suffering from the agony of a cancer, for example, will find 
much consolation in " listening to the silence of illimitable space " or in 
contemplating the " star-spangled heavens," or be convinced thereby that 
his suffering is but a " passing trifle," and " is not so very important after 
all," even if he has been trained in that modesty which Dr Nansen de- 
siderates, is more than doubtful. If his suffering allowed him to think, he 
would surely find more consolation in the thought that there was some- 
thing greater than " illimitable space " and the " star-spangled heavens," 
viz. his own mind, which was able to observe and reflect upon them. 

W. E. P. COTTER. 
EDINBURGH. 



THE RIGHT TO CONSTRAIN MEN FOR THEIR OWN GOOD. 

(Hibbert Journal, July 1908, p. 782.) 

IN an article under the above heading in the July Hibbert Journal, Pro- 
fessor W. M. Flinders Petrie, although touching on many important 
subjects in this connection, yet has omitted one which at the present time, 
however great indifference may be shown towards it by the majority, is 
nevertheless a topic of the day : I mean the right of constraint over the 
opium habit, which Professor Flinders Petrie merely mentions as u other 
drug habits," saying at the same time, that " the same principles " which 
he has been enunciating " must apply." It seems to me that this is a 
question eminently suited to discussion on the same lines as the other 
subjects mentioned in the article, and that it is a pity that the writer did 
not apply his principles to it in so many words. The opium question and 
the drink question have many points in common, but there are also two 
great differences between the two. There is no doubt that the opium 
question comes under heading B of Professor Flinders Petrie's "three 
degrees," for " we can already perceive some countervailing forces." It is 
unnecessary to enumerate these countervailing forces, or alternative evils, 
for they are, in the main, the same as those already mentioned in the 
VOL. VII. No. 1. 13 



194 THE HIBBERT JOURNAL 

article in connection with the possible suppression of alcohol, and agree 
with the eight points to be considered as set forth on pp. 788 and 789. 
The same arguments, for and against, apply equally to the forcible sup- 
pression of the opium and the alcohol habits ; except that it may possibly 
be said that over-indulgence in the former tends to less evils than does 
excessive alcohol drinking, for a man under the influence of opium does 
not go home and beat his wife with a poker. Also it may be added that 
the abuse of opium does not tend to set up a " craving " for the stimulant 
in the offspring ; and therefore opium is not as dangerous per se to third 
parties as is alcohol. 

The first point of disagreement between the two is that the opium 
habit is not one of the " faults and follies of our own people at home." 
The question has arisen almost solely in its bearings on the Chinese. And 
it is at least open to question whether we, as a nation, have the right to 
injure those to whom we are bound by legal ties, for the benefit (granting, 
for the moment, that benefit will accrue) of those to whom we are not. 
And this brings us to the second point of divergence. Everyone is agreed 
that it would be a good thing to do away with the evils of drink, if it 
were possible to do so on a strictly ethical basis : many have tried, and are 
trying, but, so far, no one has succeeded. But means have been found, 
and are being put into execution, for restricting the growth of opium in 
India, whereby it is hoped (falsely, as I believe), by limiting the output, 
to limit its use and abuse by the Chinese and others. The output of 
opium can be limited, or even totally suppressed, in India as in no other 
opium-growing country in the world, to the great detriment of India and 
its revenue. But have we the right to do it ? 

The mistake made by those ardent pseudo- moralists who desire the 
total suppression of the sale of opium (except for medicinal purposes) is 
the tacit assumption on their part that its use, as that of alcohol, is wrong 
in itself, and that therefore its suppression, regardless of the right of the 
millions who use it in moderation, is necessarily right. 

I am aware that I have not even touched the fringe ol the opium 
question as such. But my sole object was to examine it in the light of the 
ethical principles so ably argued by Professor Flinders Petrie. All those 
who, with me, cordially subscribe to those principles (without, however, 
necessarily agreeing with all the proposed measures for lessening the drink 
evil) must, in answer to the question, Have we the right forcibly to restrain 
the Chinese from using opium ? give a decided negative, and condemn as 
unmoral any action tending in that direction. And, in view of the fact 
that in China itself immense quantities of opium are produced over which 
there cannot be, as in India, any efficient control, it is no answer to say 
that the Chinese themselves desire the restriction of the opium traffic. 

R. S. WlDDRINGTON, 

6Qtk Rifles. 
SAUOOR, C.P. 



DISCUSSIONS 195 

THE CHURCH OF SCOTLAND AND ITS FORMULA. 

(Hibbert Journal, July 1908, p. 869.) 

IF the views of my friend Mr Campbell as set forth in his article on " The 
Church of Scotland and its Formula " in the July number of the Hibbert 
are representative of any considerable party in the Established Church, 
then we are within sight of a movement towards disestablishment arising 
within the Church itself. Mr Campbell, it is true, does not even mention 
disestablishment as a thing to be desired. He shrinks from it. But the 
inevitable logic of his position will drive him to it all the same. It is 
impossible to see in what other way the Church of Scotland can be honour- 
ably extricated out of the impasse in which it finds itself. 

Such a movement would be welcomed by many friends of the Church 
of Scotland outside its borders. This would be a legitimate form of 
disestablishment a church freeing itself from alien bonds which it finds 
intolerable. It would be, besides, a necessary and indispensable step 
towards the union of the two great Presbyterian Churches in Scotland. 

By Clause 5 of the Act of Parliament which settled the affairs of the 
churches in Scotland, arising from the notorious decision of the House of 
Lords, liberty was given to the Church of Scotland to alter its formula of 
subscription to the Confession of Faith. It was desired by those who 
prepared this Act to give to the Church of Scotland what may be called 
*' the most favoured nation treatment," and Clause 5 was hailed as a new 
charter of liberty. It turns out, however, that the " new charter " is a 
delusion. " In 1905," says Mr Campbell, " liberty was obtained to alter 
the part of the formula quoted, which remains henceforth under the 
exclusive jurisdiction of the Church. As, however, the Act of 1690 is 
unaffected, the Church still remains bound to the Confession and has 
liberty of movement only within its limits." So it turns out that the only 
liberty which the Church has got is liberty " to turn on its bed of pain." 
The liberty to alter the formula, without power to alter the Confession, 
will issue in a new formula which in the circumstances can only be an 
ignoble equivocation. Mr Campbell sees this, and rightly protests. He 
sees the logical issue of the situation also, but shrinks from it. " To stifle 
the cry for freedom, to bind the conscience by inelastic formulas, can have 
only one result in the Scottish Church. It will hasten a movement, not for 
an amended formula, but for the rejection of the Confession of Faith. This 
has to come some day, we have no doubt. But if it were demanded at 
present it could be granted only by the repeal of the Act of 1690, and 
what that means in the present state of Scotland it is not necessary to set 
forth here." It means of course, disestablishment the one logical and 
honourable way out of the difficulty. 

Mr Campbell's alternative (stated with a cynical frankness and blunt- 
ness positively refreshing in a writer on ecclesiastical matters, but likely 
to make his more cautious brethren gasp with horror) is this : " Would 



196 THE HIBBERT JOURNAL 

it not be better to hold by the Confession, that if we have not uniformity 
of belief we may at least have uniformity of make-believe?" We 
admire the candour of the question, but what are we to say to what it 
suggests ? As a jest, it is untimely ; if seriously meant, it is more in keep- 
ing with the expedients of those ecclesiastical Gallios whose souls have 
become asphyxiated by the poisonous atmosphere of blue-books than with 
the open mind of our parish minister. 

Mr Campbell's instinct for freedom is right, but it is new-born. His 
eyes are as yet but half opened. That he should " see men as trees walking " 
and some other things a little in confusion is therefore not so much to be 
wondered at. He will pardon me reminding him of the lesson which our 
race has learned at a great price. It is this. Freedom is won : it is not 
gifted. It can never, never be won by uniformitarians in " make-believe." 

With his discussion of the " formula " Mr Campbell has incorporated 
some remarks on the progress of the Scottish Church. The classical age 
of that Church is assigned (to our surprise) to the Moderates of the 
eighteenth century. Among these David Hume is accorded a place of 
honour ! Here again we have difficulty in believing that Mr Campbell is 
serious. His apotheosis of Hume and the Moderates has the effect of an 
elaborate jest, though possibly it is not so intended. We know what 
Hume thought of his ironical canonisation by the wag who chalked " St 
David's Street " on the corner of his house, then newly built, and forming 
the beginning of a street then unnamed. One wonders what he would say 
to Mr Campbell ranking him with the prophets ! 

Hume, it is true, consorted with the Moderates, and they with him. It 
would, however, be surprising to learn that they all did so. It is an open 
question whether this fraternisation of Hume and the ministers was really 
creditable to either side. Could Hume really respect men who meekly 
swallowed his covert insults against their religion ? It may be doubted. 
Wellington, we know, had to consort with the Spaniards. We have no 
reasons for believing that he respected his Spanish " friends " more highly 
than his French enemies. 

This is not the occasion to offer a critique on Hume; but the cry 
" Back to Hume and the Moderates " sounds queer as the rallying cry of 
any party in a church of the twentieth century. The Moderates, if they 
stood for anything in particular, stood for " culture " a somewhat thin and 
insipid variety of it. Their sympathies, if they had any, leaned towards 
the French Encyclopaedia. As a party, they contributed nothing to religion 
in the usual sense of the term. Mr Campbell wishes to utter a chivalrous 
word for them, and we have no quarrel with him for doing so. We only 
protest when he praises them at the expense of the "other side." Mr 
Campbell's references to the revival at Cambuslang and other movements 
of the kind as " orgies of fanaticism " and " fantastic devil-worship " must 
be admitted by himself, on reflection, to be an offence to good taste. They 
show also (and this is even more serious) a misapprehension of what 



DISCUSSIONS 197 

religion is in its true inwardness, in its real essence. It is surely un- 
necessary to point out that the subject-matter of religion is not the same 
as the subject-matter of philosophy or literature. However eminent Hume 
may be as a thinker or Robertson or Blair as literary men (and no one 
denies them their claim), yet such eminence does not constitute them 
religious forces. This confusion runs through the whole of the article 
dealing with the wider aspect of religion in Scotland, and makes any helpful 
conclusions impossible. Looked at from the point of view of Dr James 
in his article on a cognate theme in the same number of the Hibbert, 
Mr Campbell's strictures seem hopelessly out of focus and out of date. 

In a short discussion it is impossible to supply a full corrective to Mr 
Campbell's one-sided and antiquated views ; but he may be reminded that 
" revivals " have a rational justification in so far as they supply the raw 
material for the sculpturing forces of God to act upon. They have their 
analogy in the physical world in the volcanic action that throws up new 
material to replace that which has been worn down. So regarded, the 
" work at Cambuslang " has the same justification as the " work at 
Pentecost," and answers to the same end. " The gold-dust comes to birth 
with the quartz sand all around it, and this is as much a condition of 
religion as of any other excellent possession." I commend this quotation 
from the article by Dr James to Mr Campbell's consideration. When he 
appreciates the bearings of it, one has the hope that his scorn of 
" revivals " will be considerably mitigated. 

It cannot be expected that we of the United Free Church who repre- 
sent the evangelical tradition in Scotland, and are the heirs of the 
Secession and the Disruption, are able to accept Mr Campbell's article as 
a satisfactory contribution to a difficult subject, but we can welcome it as 
a candid indication of the position of himself and his party in the Church 
of Scotland. It is evident that much rubbish must be cleared away 
before we get a satisfactory and stable " site " for the comprehensive union 
which many of us desire to see consummated. 

DAVID HOUSTON. 

ST OLAF'S UNITED FREE MANSE, 
LERWICK. 



REVIEWS 



The Religious Teachers of Greece. Being Gifford Lectures on Natural 
Religion delivered at Aberdeen. By James Adam, Litt.D., LL.D., 
Fellow and Senior Tutor of Emmanuel College, Cambridge. Edited, 
with a Memoir, by his Wife. Edinburgh : T. & T. Clark, 1908. 
Pp. xx + LVI + 468. 

THE area covered by the Gifford Lectureships in the Scottish Universities 
tends constantly to widen, and in these lectures the late Dr Adam entered 
on a comparatively new and very fruitful field of inquiry. It is true that 
four or five years previously Dr Edward Caird devoted his second series of 
Gifford Lectures to a study of the development of theological ideas in 
Greek philosophy ; but while three-fourths of his book is occupied with 
Aristotle and those who came after him, Dr Adam does not follow his 
subject beyond Plato, and a great part of his volume is devoted to the 
poets, who, even more than the philosophers, were " the religious teachers " 
of classical Greece. Thus the two books are admirably adapted to 
supplement one another, and together they give a far more complete 
account of the development of Greek religious thought than has hitherto 
existed in this country. 

The value of this volume of Dr Adam's lectures is greatly increased by 
the memoir with which it opens. Like another great scholar, Robertson 
Smith, he was born under the shadow of that Aberdeenshire mountain, 
Benachie, from whose slopes so many distinguished men have come. Like 
Robertson Smith, he spent a strenuous and brilliant life at Aberdeen and 
Cambridge ; and both men passed away at the early age of forty-seven. 
The story of Adam's earlier years is one that has often found a place in 
the annals of Scottish scholarship ; but it is here told in a way that brings 
vividly before the reader the difficulties against which the young scholar 
had to contend, his early love for Greek, which he went off to study on 
the moors in summer after a breakfast of porridge taken at 5.30 a.m., his 
years of intense application at that rigorous home of learning, Aberdeen 
University, and the encouragement which he gained from the teaching and 
friendship of Sir William Geddes. Both at this time and in his years at 
Cambridge, Adam appears as much more than a mere scholar : as a man of 
wide humanity and many enthusiasms, loved by children, and admired by 
those whom he taught. He speaks himself (p. 365) of the " prcefervidum 
ingenium characteristic of the idealist " ; and it was because he added this 

198 



RELIGIOUS TEACHERS OF GREECE 199 

power of quick intuition and poetic insight, derived perhaps from some 
Celtic ancestor, to an Aberdonian persistence and acuteness of mind that 
he was so well fitted to act as an interpreter of the many-sided genius of 
Plato. To the same ardent and intense temperament was probably due 
that alternation of periods of mental exhilaration and intense depression 
of which we are here told. Perhaps the highest praise that can be given 
this memoir is to say that it is written with a truly Hellenic directness 
id restraint, and that its fifty-five pages give so complete and living a 
>icture of its subject that even those who did not know Adam feel them- 
Ives in actual contact with the personality of the author in reading the 

js that follow. 

Mention should also be made of the number and accuracy of the 
jferences, which show both the industry with which Dr Adam collected 
le materials for his work and the care spent on its revision. The only 
lission which we have detected in the editorial part of the work is that 
jveral important headings (e.g., Apollo and Delphi) fail to appear in the 
idex. 

In his first lecture Dr Adam treats of the " feud between philosophy 
id poetry" 1 in respect to their theological ideas; and he proceeds to 
the development of religious thought, first in the poets from Homer 
Sophocles, next in the philosophers from Thales to the Sophists, and 
len in Euripides, who was at once philosopher his enemies said 
sophist " and poet ; while the whole work culminates appropriately in an 
:ount of the religious ideas of Socrates and Plato. This independent 
itment of the two contrasted lines of development gives clearness to 
Adam's exposition ; and the only possible criticisms of the arrangement 
of the work are that the lecture on Orphism comes in somewhat awkwardly 
between the sections on Bacchylides and Pindar, and that the book 
concludes abruptly with a short account of Plato^s doctrine of Immortality, 
the reader being left to gather up for himself the different threads which 
ive been unrolled in the lectures. 

Of these threads, perhaps the most important is that by which we 
)llow the gradual development of Greek thought from the early polytheism 
a monotheistic form of belief. In tracing this development in Greek 
>try the author shows a keen eye for those elements in the earlier poets 
rhich pointed to the thought of unity in the Divine nature ; and yet he 
careful not to attribute monotheism to the poets down to the time of 
>phocles. But even the polytheism of Homer represents an advance on 
" chaos of pre-existing legends and belief " ; for " we may well suppose 
it it is the universalising instinct of poetry which has apprehended and 
isfigured the universal element in the particular cults, creating out of 
d and provincial deities the awe-inspiring figures of a single Zeus, a 
single Apollo, a single Poseidon, and so on " (p. 8). Dr Gilbert Murray 
reached the same conclusion, and holds that the Homeric poets not 
ily unified but purified the religious beliefs of the Hellenic race (Rise of 
Greek Epic, pp. 134-5). But while Dr Murray lays the chief emphasis 



200 THE HIBBERT JOURNAL 

on the positive achievement of Homeric poetry in purifying belief and 
doing away with the " baleful confusion between man and God," Dr 
Adam freely acknowledges the darker side of Homeric religion, and 
points out that, though there were elements of idealism in the Homeric 
theology which raise it above the theology of Hesiod (pp. 29, 81), yet 
there is hardly a trace in Homer of the feeling that the gods ought to be 
regarded as moral examples to man (p. 65). Thus, although he finds the 
leading characteristic of the Homeric faith to be the sense of dependence 
upon the Divine power (pp. 21 ff.) a feeling which a great modern thinker 
considered the essence of religion he yet shows how long a path had 
to be traversed before this feeling was transformed into an ethical 
monotheism. 

To this end both the lyric and the tragic poets contributed. Pindar 
protested against the attribution of evil to the gods in words which anticipate 
Plato ; and in his odes, as in Hesiod and the Homeric hymns, Dr Adam 
traces the tendency to exalt Zeus above the other Olympians (pp. 71-2, 
83, 117-8). This tendency becomes clearer in ^Eschylus and Sophocles. 
Except in the Prometheus, which depicts a transitory phase in the Divine 
government of the world, the tendency of the Jschylean drama as a 
whole " is undoubtedly to exalt the authority of Zeus, and to make Destiny 
either his coadjutor or simply that which he decrees' 1 (p. 142). The idea 
that any less power than Destiny could thwart the will of Zeus has been 
left far behind; and in Sophocles the supremacy of Zeus is no longer 
questioned. But Dr Adam does not on that account define the religion 
of either poet as monotheistic. He describes the position of both in 
almost identical words : " The one essential difference between the 
polytheism of Homer and the polytheism of Sophocles is that in Sophocles 
there is no longer any conflict of wills in the celestial hierarchy: the 
authority of Zeus is not only supreme but unquestioned " (p. 177; cf. 
p. H4). 

But along with the development of belief regarding the gods in Greek 
poetry there went a widening current of human sympathy which had a 
genuinely religious aspect ; and to this also Dr Adam's book does justice. 
In Homer the sanction of right and noble conduct is not the example of 
the gods so much as the feeling of aiSw (p. 65). Probably no lines in 
Homer dealing directly with the gods have sunk more deeply into the 
hearts of succeeding generations of men, or have more genuinely religious 
a ring, than those in which Hector refuses to leave the battle, though he 
realises to the full the fate which awaits his wife and child as well as 
himself if he goes forward 

ovSe /xe 6v/j.o$ avwyev, eVel ftdOov eju/xei/at 6<rO\os 
aiel Kcti TrpcoTOKri /xera T/oaWa-f 



Here is u morality touched with emotion " ; and in course of time the 
moral and religious elements which in Homer were partially separated 
were bound to draw together. This ideal treatment of human nature 



RELIGIOUS TEACHERS OF GREECE 201 

was reinforced by HesiocTs teaching of the dignity of labour (pp. 80-1), 
and still more by the wide sympathy of Sophocles with suffering and his per- 
ception of its purifying influence (pp. 178 ff.). It is, however, in Euripides 
that it reaches its full force ; and Dr Adam rightly points out that it is 
this positive idea which underlies all the poet's destructive criticism (pp. 
297, 305). In spite of Euripides 1 violent revolt from the Homeric theology, 
yet in his poetry as in that of Homer the " moral grandeur of man " stands 
out against the frequent baseness of the gods. Thus Dr Adam's conclusion 
ims well within the mark when he says, " Perhaps the poet rendered some 
vice to religion by his new and deeper interpretation of humanity " 
p. 306 ; cf. pp. 66-7). 

These two topics by no means exhaust Dr Adam's treatment of this 
ivision of his subject. Other points on which light is thrown by his book are 
the doctrine of '" the envy of the gods " and its moralisation by ^Eschylus 
(pp. 37, 123-5, 157), and the teaching of the poets in regard to responsibility 
for sin. He also gives a very full and adequate account of the development 
of the idea of immortality. His pages on the Homeric conception of a 
future life follow the familiar lines, but he brings out with especial 
clearness the fact that, with the exception of a few " half-heroic figures " and 
favourites of the gods, future happiness or woe is not affected by the good 
or evil done on earth (p. 60). But in Pindar the influence of Orphic ideas 
begins to operate, although in general he holds to the Homeric theology. 
In decided contrast to JSschylus, he " contemplates with more satisfaction 
the rewards of virtue than the punishments of vice 11 (pp. 128, 145). It is 
in this connection that Dr Adam's account of Orphism is introduced ; and 
some readers may feel that he lays a rather disproportionate emphasis on 
the lower aspects of that obscure but intensely interesting movement, and 
that his description of Orphic " other- worldliness " needs some modification 
in view of Miss Harrison's conclusion, which he accepts on p. 101, that 
" consecration .... is the keynote of Orphic faith, 11 rather than immor- 
tality as a separate end. Dr Adam concludes his chapter by remarking that 
Orphism had to be intellectualised, and that "the intellectualisation of 

E belief was effected by Plato 11 (p. 114). But this was only one aspect 
'lato's achievement. It was at least as great a thing to bring these new 
rious ideas into relation to the ethical and political ideals of Greece. 
1 in both these directions, as Dr Adam subsequently points out, Plato 
completing the work begun by the Pythagoreans, who sought moral 
emancipation not merely by ritual, but also by the pursuit of knowledge 
and by political action (pp. 193-7). 

In his account of Pre-Socratic Philosophy Dr Adam traces from the 
first a monistic element which was " bound to bring it into conflict with 
Greek polytheism " (p. 190), and which did something to prepare the way 
for monotheism. In this part of the volume there is a much greater 
tendency to interpret early thinkers by the help of later ideas than in that 
which deals with the poets. In the case of Xenophanes this comes out 
strongly ; while in discovering the beginnings of the " Logos-doctrine " in 



202 THE HIBBERT JOURNAL 

Heraclitus and in arguing that Anaxagoras thought of Nous as incor- 
poreal, Dr Adam takes a widely different view from that of Professor 
Burnet. The difference of attitude between the two writers is illustrated 
by their remarks on Anaxagoras. Professor Burnet says : " Zeller holds 
indeed that Anaxagoras meant to speak of something incorporeal ; but he 
fully admits that he did not succeed in doing so, and this is historically 
the important point " (Early Greek Philosophy, p. 293). But Dr Adam 
holds that " the historically important point is not whether Anaxagoras 
called Nous God or not ; it is rather to what extent he ascribed to Nous 
those attributes and functions which, according to the theology of later 
times, belong to the Deity " (p. 264). If it is objected that this method 
of interpretation introduces a subjective element, one might reply with Dr 
Adam that there is a suspicion of petitio principii in (e.g.) refusing to 
admit that so original a thinker as Heraclitus might have used the term 
Logos in a sense for which there is no other authority in his time (p. 221). 
In curious contrast to Dr Adam's generous treatment of the other Pre- 
Socratics is his abrupt dismissal of Parmenides and the Eleatic School 
after two pages as " of little or no importance to the student of theological 
ideas " (p. 244). 

In his treatment of the Sophists and Socrates Dr Adam takes up a 
conservative position, laying greater emphasis than many recent writers on 
the destructive side of the Sophistic teaching and on the positive religious 
teaching of Socrates. He argues for the subjective and individualistic 
interpretation of the Homo Mensura, relying largely on the testimony of 
the Thextetus (p. 274), and apparently setting aside the more favourable 
view of the teaching of the great sophist suggested by Plato in the 
Protagoras. But at the same time he acknowledges the influence of the 
Sophists, along with Euripides and in a deeper sense Socrates himself, in 
preparing the way for the Stoic and Christian ideal of human brotherhood 
(pp. 283, 325). 

The closing sections of the book are perhaps the best of all. In 
dealing with Socrates and Plato Dr Adam was on familiar ground, and 
he was able to bring, even to those parts of his subject which have been 
most frequently discussed, a rare freshness and clearness of vision, as well 
as a wealth of detailed knowledge. He finds the keynote of Socrates' 1 
character in his union of rationalism and transcendentalism. " The union 
of prophet and rationalist is so rare in our experience, that writers on 
Socrates have often unduly emphasised one of the two sides of his char- 
acter at the expense of the other " (p. 321 ). Dr Adam avoids this mistake, 
and shows how a recognition of both the critical and, to use his own word, 
the " prophetic " aspects is necessary to a true understanding of Socrates. 
In so doing he makes a larger use of Xenophon's evidence than most recent 
writers. 

In his treatment of Plato Dr Adam shows the same gift of recovering 
evidence from sources which have often been comparatively overlooked. 
In his lecture on the " Cosmological Doctrine " he draws from the Timceus 



RELIGIOUS TEACHERS OF GREECE 203 

a number of telling illustrations of the metaphysics of the Republic. The 
following lectures are entitled : " Elements of Asceticism and Mysticism," 
" The Theory of Education," and " The Theory of Ideas " ; and each is a 
valuable contribution to the interpretation of an essential part of the 
Platonic thought. One of the most interesting, but, at the same time, 
debatable passages, is that in which the author argues that the Idea of 
the Good in the Republic should be interpreted in the light of the state- 
ments regarding the Divine Mind in the Philebus and Sophist (pp. 446-7). 
Here, again, we notice the " teleological " as opposed to the literal method 
of interpretation. 

But perhaps the most original parts of Dr Adam's treatment of Plato 
are the parallels which he points out between Platonic and Christian 
thought. Especially suggestive are his comparisons of the Platonic and 
Pauline conceptions of the temporal and the eternal worlds, of the natural 
and the spiritual life, and of death to sin and resurrection to a new life 
(pp. 359 f., 381-6). And that the parallels which he here traces were 
present to his mind throughout is shown by his words in his opening 
lecture : fc< The particular suggestion which 1 desire to make is, that the 
religious ideas of Greek philosophy are of peculiar importance for the 
student of early Christian literature in general, and more especially for 
the student of St Paul's Epistles and the Fourth Gospel. 'Neque sine 
Graecis Christianas, neque sine Christianis Graecae litterae recte aut intelligi 
aut aestimari possunt 1 " (p. 2). It is a great gain that by studies such as 
this of the religious thought of Greece, as well as by studies of Hebrew 
thought which show its essentially human side, we should be enabled to 
appreciate the points of contact of Greek and Hebrew thought as well as 
their points of difference. The old hard and fast antithesis of Hebraism 
and Hellenism, which placed them in unmediated opposition, is gradually 
giving place to a truer distinction which recognises these two great 
factors in the life and thought of the race as complementary rather than 
as wholly antagonistic. 

Dr Adam's book is likely to hold its place for long, not only because 
of its learning and philosophic insight, but as a complete and worthy 
memorial consummatio totius vit& of a life of constant and conspicuous 
devotion to the study of Greek literature and thought. 

G. F. BARBOUR. 

PlTLOCHRY, N.B. 



Essays, Philosophical and Psychological, in honor of William James, 
Professor in Harvard University. By his Colleagues at Columbia 
University. Longmans, Green & Co., 1908. Pp. viii + 610. 

IT is a fitting and graceful act on the part of the Philosophical Faculty 
of Columbia University to do honour to a great teacher by a collection 
of essays dealing with the various subjects on which he has taught. " This 



204 THE HIBBERT JOURNAL 

volume is intended," as is stated in the prefatory note, " to mark in some 
degree its authors' 1 sense of Professor Jameses memorable services in 
philosophy and psychology, the vitality he has added to those studies, 
and the encouragement that has flowed from him to colleagues without 
number. " The authors have rightly judged that their purpose did not 
demand a slavish adherence to Professor James's own doctrines. Some of 
them are pragmatists, some, apparently, are not ; but since, in philosophy, 
unanimity is only found where thought has ceased, this is a state of 
things which not even the most ardent pragmatist need regret. 

The essays deal with a great multiplicity of subjects : metaphysics, 
theory of knowledge, history of philosophy, ethics, and psychology. It is 
impossible in the space of a review to do justice to all the contributions; 
but there are two essays which deserve special attention, as being concerned 
with the advocacy of some of the most fundamental of William James's 
philosophical opinions. These are the essays by Professor Dewey and 
Professor C. A. Strong, which are both really on the nature of knowledge. 

Professor Dewey 's essay : " Does Reality possess Practical Character ? " 
is the only one which definitely undertakes the defence of the pragmatic 
position. Professor Dewey has a great contempt for theory of knowledge, 
which he alludes to as " that species of confirmed intellectual lock-jaw 
called epistemology." Nevertheless his essay is a contribution to that 
subject, being an attempt to explain how knowledge can be accurate and 
can yet change the object known, as pragmatism avers that it must do. 
His position is that, although knowledge changes the object from what it 
was before we knew it, it may succeed in changing it into precisely what 
we know it to be, so that after the knowing has produced its effect on the 
object, it becomes accurate. Pragmatisn holds, he says, that knowledge 
makes a difference to the object, but not to the object-fo-fo-known. A 
reality which is the appropriate object of knowledge may be one in which 
knowledge has succeeded in making the needed difference. And again : 
" knowing fails in its business if it makes a change in its own object that 
is a mistake ; but its own object is none the less a prior existence changed 
in a certain way." This view, on the face of it, is much more Kantian 
than, one would gather, its defenders consider it to be. There is an 
unknowable thing in itself, which is altered by contact with the knower in 
such a way as to become knowable. Where, I suppose, it chiefly differs 
from Kant is in the element of experiment. That is, there is an object, X, 
which will be changed by any belief we may entertain about it. Hence if 
we could believe it to be X, we should be wrong, because our belief would 
have made it cease to be X. Thus X itself is essentially unknowable. 
Suppose that if we believe it to be Xj, it becomes Y t ; if we believe it to 
be X 2 , it becomes Y 2 , and so on. Then the problem is to find an X n which 
is identical with Y n . A priori, one would say there might be many such 
X^s, or there might be none. If there were many, the reality would be 
ambiguous for knowledge ; if none, it would be unknowable. 

It would be interesting to know how Professor Dewey deals with these 



PHILOSOPHICAL ESSAYS 205 

possibilities. Professor Dewey urges that the reason why objection is 
taken to the view that knowledge alters things is that the theory of 
knowledge is built on the assumption of a static universe. But this surely 
rests upon a misunderstanding. The truth about what changes does not 
itself change. Professor Dewey seems to hold some principle of the same 
type as 

" Who drives fat oxen should himself be fat/' 

namely, "Truths about change must themselves be changeable." Thus 
such a proposition as "the date of the Conquest is 1066" must be 
supposed to have been true in 1066, but to be true no longer. To suppose 
it always true does not, on any other hypothesis, involve denial of the 

lity of that change which we call the Conquest. It is to be hoped 
that pragmatists will some day show us how it is that this confusion is 
not really involved in their theory of knowledge. 

Professor C. A. Strong's article on " Substitutionalism " is very inter- 
esting, but far too brief for its theme. His essential thesis, he tells us, is 
a proposition in regard to the mechanism of cognition, namely, " that it 
happens by the projection of a sentient experience into the place of the 
>bject cognized, and is not a species of intuition. ... By projection [he 
continues] I mean that the experience evokes actions (and thoughts, which 
are a sort of actions) appropriate to the object, and not to itself as an 
experience." Thus in memory, for example, we have a more or less 
perfect reproduction of the past, which provokes us to act as if what we 
had to do with were not the present state, but the past object. The 
difficulty which naturally occurs to the reader, that on this theory there 
seems no reason to suppose that experience has to do with objects at all, 
is very candidly stated, but is not dealt with, on the plea that it is too 
large for a short essay. We are therefore, for the present, left to 
conjecture how it would be solved. 

There are two interesting essays on Realism, one by Professor Fullerton, 
called " The New Realism," and one by Professor Miller, called " Naive 
Realism : What is It ? " Professor Fullerton considers the question as to 
the concessions which realism must make in order to meet idealist 
criticisms, and concludes that idealism has not succeeded in making every 
kind of realism untenable. "He who declares all phenomena to be 
mental," he says, " repudiates the actual knowledge of the world which 
both the unlearned and the learned seem to have. He repudiates a 
distinction which is embedded in the very structure of human experience." 
It is therefore worth while to make an effort to preserve this distinction. 
" What right," he asks, " has the philosopher to rub out this distinction ? 
He has no right. The idealistic philosopher who maintains that the 
objective order which we are all forced to accept, and of which science 
attempts to give us an exact account, is an Absolute Mind, has simply 
recognised the external world, and has given it the wrong name." But 
" the realist should frankly admit that the only external world about 



206 THE HIBBERT JOURNAL 

which it can be profitable to talk at all is an external world revealed in 
experience " ; the mistake of the idealist consists in supposing that this 
obliges us to identify an object with our experiences of it. 

Professor Dickinson S. Miller, in his essay on Naive Realism, endeavours 
to prove that " naive realism," if this means the realism of the philosophi- 
cally unsophisticated, cannot be regarded as a " theory " at all. " It is," 
he says, " more na'ive than we thought. All there is of it is acceptable." 
There is no such thing, he says, as a " conscious transubjective reference." 
It is true that in perception we recognise an object as " external to our- 
selves," but this does not mean " external to our consciousness " : it means 
"external to our bodies, primarily; and secondarily, distinct from our 
feelings and ideas." The essay is ingenious and careful, but it seems 
legitimate to doubt whether naive realism is as little of a theory conceming 
objects as Professor Miller believes it to be. 

There is a good essay by Professor Brown on " The Problem of Method 
in Mathematics and Philosophy," in which it is pointed out that mathe- 
matics, for all its apparatus of deduction, is really an inductive science, and 
that its method is (or should be ?) also that of philosophy. There are, 
according to Professor Brown, three stages of science, namely, (I) the pure 
empirical, which merely collects facts ; (2) the merely hypothetical, which 
proposes hypotheses to connect the facts ; (3) the hypothetico-deductive, 
" in which the hypotheses have been sufficiently verified so that they may 
be taken together as premises, and new conclusions deduced which are 
found to be also verified." Mathematics and philosophy alone, he says, 
have reached the third stage. It would seem possible to maintain, as 
against this view of the actual stage reached by philosophy, that there is 
an earlier stage than any of Professor Brown's three, namely, the purely 
deductive, in which unverified hypotheses are used to supply what are 
regarded as proofs of untested conclusions. This stage, which looks very 
like the hypothetico-deductive, was, roughly, the stage in which mechanics 
was before Galileo, and might be regarded by the sceptic as the stage in 
which philosophy still is. Otherwise, it seems hard to account for the 
immense difference in certainty between the conclusions of philosophy and 
those of mathematics. 

The last essay in the book, " A Pragmatic Substitute for Free Will," 
by Professor Thorndike, rouses hopes by its title which are hardly 
fulfilled by the subsequent argument. In the first place, we are told (on 
the authority of William James) that the only reason why free will has 
pragmatic value is in order to assure us that the world may grow better. 
Now what in fact makes most people desire free will is that they wish to 
think themselves meritorious and their enemies wicked. But if we let 
this pass, we still find that the essay does not fulfil its promise. " I shall 
try to prove," says Professor Thorndike, "that the behavior of human 
beings changes the world for the better for them, and for future human 
beings." The proof proceeds by means of five hypotheses as to the 
physiological behaviour of neurones. As a cure for pessimism, it suffers 



PHILOSOPHICAL ESSAYS 207 

from the defect of not disproving the accepted theory that the earth must 
some day become uninhabitable ; and in other respects it fails to be con- 
vincing to those who are more alive to the facts of human existence than 
to the theories of psychophysics. 

The book, as a whole, is easy and pleasant reading, and shows serious 
attempts to grapple with some of the most important problems of 
philosophy. The method of short essays has the drawback that no really 
difficult subject can be treated as fully as would be necessary for an 
adequate discussion ; but, within the inevitable limitation, many of the 
essays will be found stimulating and highly suggestive. 

B. RUSSELL. 
OXFORD. 



Philosophy of Loyalty. By Josiah Royce, Professor of the History 
of Philosophy in Harvard University. New York : The Macmillan 
Company, 1908. Pp. xiii + 409. 

us book consists of eight lectures delivered before the Lowell Institute 
Boston in 1907. The rather curious title was suggested by Steinmetz's 
)k on the Philosophy of War; and it has been part of the author's 
sk to break the " ancient and disastrous association " that makes loyalty 
ibservient to the war-spirit. The warrior is not the only or the best 
ipresentative of the spirit of rational loyalty : loyalty is of much wider 
rificance ; and the author attempts to show that " in loyalty, when 
>yalty is properly defined, is the fulfilment of the whole moral law." It 
therefore with a philosophy of morals that we are here presented ; and, 
Ithough the title of the book may have been suggested by Steinmetz, a 
>re important motive may perhaps be traced in the choice. Philoso- 
icrs of Professor Royce's way of thinking have commonly expressed the 
>ral ideal by some such conception as self-realisation, or the development 
perfection of personal qualities ; and this conception has often produced 
impression of being only a form though an idealist form of egoism 
individualism. The criticism does less than justice to the conception 
personality as it is found either in Hegel or in T. H. Green. But it is 
>vious enough to affect the popular mind, and to make it worth while 
for an author who lays such stress as Professor Royce does on the social 
factor in life to avoid the suggestion from the outset, and to make it clear 
that morality does not lie in the self or its development as a mere indi- 
vidual, but in something that lifts it out of this mere individuality and 
unites it with the universe in which all selves are included. For this 
reason he seems to have chosen the conception of loyalty to describe his 
moral principle. For the loyal man devotes himself to a cause in which 
his mere individuality is lost ; and he devotes himself to it willingly as 
finding in its success the fulfilment of his own life. 

Loyalty is defined at least preliminarily as " the willing and prac- 
tical and thoroughgoing devotion of a person to a cause." And a cause 



208 THE HIBBERT JOURNAL 

means " something that is conceived by its loyal servant as unifying the 
lives of various human beings into one life." And the whole law and the 
prophets can be summed up in the command " be loyal." There is a good 
deal of value in this way of putting the matter ; and Professor Royce is no 
doubt right in pointing to many of the unhealthy conditions of modern, 
especially American, life as due to lack of loyalty to any worthy cause. 
For this reason the author's homiletics are to be welcomed. Loyalty is at 
least a primary and important factor in the moral life, if it is not the 
whole of it. From this point of view also the diffuseness of the author's 
style and his habit of constant repetition of the same idea in similar or 
identical phrase may be explained. Popular audiences can only be con- 
vinced by repetition. And the author unites all the accomplishments of 
the orator with the insight of the metaphysician. But it would be too 
much to assert that he has been able altogether to overcome the traditional 
opposition between the rhetorician and the philosopher. From the 
latter's point of view the book might have been better if it had been 
shorter. The reader is apt to be carried over the difficult places of the 
argument by the flow of the author's eloquence rather than by the force of 
his logical reasoning. 

The fundamental difficulty of the whole position is that loyalty to a 
cause is, after all, a merely formal conception. Professor Royce is thus 
in the same difficulty as Kant was when he attempted to deduce a moral 
code from a formal principle. His method of solution is indeed different 
from Kant's, and consists in a certain modification, perhaps deepening, 
of the initial conception of loyalty. But the questions which arise are 
much the same. How are we to distinguish the good from the bad among 
the causes to which men may be loyal ? And what canon of preference is 
there for choosing between competing causes, each of which by itself might 
be regarded as good ? 

For solving these and similar questions Professor Royce makes use 
of that modified or deepened conception which I have referred to, and 
which he expresses by the phrase " loyalty to loyalty." I am not sure 
that this phrase is always used with exactly the same meaning. In some 
cases it seems to mean much the same as what is commonly described by 
the term conscientiousness as applied to the man who is scrupulous in 
always observing and following the dictates of his conscience. The 
example given on pp. 135-7 seems to be a case of this sort, for in it 
the obvious loyalty of the official to his chief was superseded by the 
higher loyalty which the official's conscience told him he owed to truth. 
But the example is too long to quote or to discuss, and the explicit 
meaning given to the phrase "loyalty to loyalty" is simply the promotion 
of loyalty in self and others. " Be loyal to loyalty " means " do what you 
can to produce a maximum of the devoted service of causes, a maximum 
of fidelity, and of selves that choose and serve fitting objects of loyalty." 
The word "fitting" here might seem to beg the whole question of the 
distinction of good from bad causes. But this can hardly be intended, 



PHILOSOPHY OF LOYALTY 209 

and "fitting" must be interpreted to mean simply fit to encourage or 
produce more loyalty. Maximum of loyalty, therefore, may be said to 
be the end for Professor Royce, just as maximum of pleasure is for the 
Hedonists. It is easy to show that the ordinary virtues of social life 
exhibit and encourage loyalty. In the same way the Hedonists had no 
difficulty in pointing out their felicific consequences. But can we use 
maximum of loyalty as a criterion for distinguishing between good causes 
and bad? The difficulties here are similar to those in the way of the 
Hedonist. If the example may be pardoned, we may say that loyalty to 
Tammany and organisations like to it is a prominent feature in American 
political life. This feature is not all bad. Yet this very spirit of loyalty 
so directed is a more serious danger to good government than would be 
the total selfishnesses of all Tammany^s constituent members. Now, have 
we any calculus of loyalties capable of assuring us that if purity in politics 
were to triumph by the dissolution of Tammany and its fellows, there 
would be compensation in kind for the loyalties destroyed, and the 
maximum of loyalty throughout the American continent would be in- 
creased ? I am far from saying that even in this way compensation would 
not be granted ; but I do not know how the sum is to be worked, and I 
should not like to stake the cause of good government on the hazard of 
the calculation. And the author offers no suggestion of any such calculus 
of loyalties. The misfortune is that, apart from such a calculus or some 
substitute for it, his distinction of good from evil becomes a matter simply 
of common sense, not recognised as such. 

The lack of any criterion of any working principle is most plainly 
disclosed when Professor Royce goes on to discuss the second question 
which I have put a question which he states in the form, " How shall we 
decide, as between two apparently conflicting loyalties, which one to 
follow ? " Let it be granted that each loyalty contains promise of good 
in his example, good to the community from trained fitness for a pro- 
fessional career in competition with good to a family which disaster had 
bereft of its head. In such a case the principle of loyalty " commands 
simply but imperatively that, since I must serve, and since, at this critical 
loment, my only service must take the form of a choice between loyalties, 

11 choose, even in my ignorance, what form my service is henceforth to 
In other words, the principle of choice is choose. Having chosen, 
I must of course be faithful to my cause. This is no caricature. What 
the principle "clearly says" is formulated with all the emphasis that 
italics can give in the words, " Decide, knowingly if you can, ignorantly if 
you must, but in any case decide, and have no fear." Nothing can better 
illustrate the bare formality of the principle than this statement. It is 
true that other ethical theories than Professor Royce's must allow that 
" my special choice of my personal cause is always fallible."" But they 
usually point to some more or less definable end for their criterion : to 
happiness, or to well-being, or to the perfection of personal qualities ends 
the way to which may be difficult or dubious, but which at least offer a 

VOL. VIL No. 1. 14 




210 THE HIBBERT JOURNAL 

concrete ideal for action. They do not rest content with the ineffectual 
advice that the principle of choice is to choose. 

The two last lectures of the volume enter upon the metaphysics of the 
subject, and in them appears the author's final definition : " Loyalty is 
the will to manifest, so far as is possible, the Eternal, that is, the conscious 
and superhuman unity of life, in the form of the acts of an individual 
Self." There is value in this conception. But it adds nothing to the 
solution of those practical questions which occupy the greater portion of 
the volume. On the contrary, it increases the difficulties already pointed 
out. For the definition is so interpreted as to include all purposive 
activity of whatever kind. Evil, like good, becomes a will to manifest the 
Eternal, a "fragmentary form of the service of the cause of universal 
loyalty." Whatever be the truth of this view, it should be unnecessary to 
repeat that we are not helped to distinguish the evil cause from the good 
by being told that the distinction is merely a relative one. 

The metaphysics of loyalty stated by the author is at the same time a 
theory of truth and of reality. And here he expounds his own views in 
connection and contrast with those of Professor James. His criticism of 
his Harvard colleague is so appreciative, and his references to their points 
of disagreement are so intimate and personal, that the reader feels as if he 
were the unwilling witness of a domestic dispute in which it would be 
indecent for an outsider to interfere. Such interference need not be 
required of the present reviewer, as he has already had an opportunity of 
commenting on Professor Royce's metaphysical theory in the pages of this 
journal. That theory remains substantially the same as it was. Only it 
seems to me as if his attitude were modified by an approach to the pragmatic 
method, as if he, too, chose his philosophic road by a voluntary preference 
" knowingly if you can, ignorantly if you must" and then found reasons 
to justify his course. There is another way of philosophising a strait and 
narrow way ; and one would be glad to think that the author had not 
deserted it in which logic leads instead of being made to follow, and in 
which no step is taken but under the direction of reason. 

W. R. SORLRY. 
CAMBRIDGE. 



Identite et RealityPar mile Meyerson. Paris : Felix Alcan, 1908. 

Pp. vii + 431. 

THE variety of theories of the constitution of matter, the rapidity with 
which these and other comprehensive theories follow each other, have led 
scientists to formulate views on the nature of scientific aims and theories 
which some people find rather disconcerting. If the physics of philosophers 
has not proved satisfactory, the philosophy of physicists seems scarcely 
more so. An exhaustive examination of the subject would certainly appear 
desirable, and the book before us is an interesting contribution in this 



supe 
tion 



IDENTITY AND REALITY 211 

direction. Somewhat after the manner of Whewell, M. Meyerson tries to 
get at the philosophy of science by means of the historical evolution of the 
leading conceptions of modern science. The title of the book indicates the 
goal rather than the aim of our author's investigations. 

The book opens with an attempt to show the futility of trying to 
confine science to description and the discovery of uniformities, and to 
restrain it from causal hypotheses, or to explain these away as mere aids to 
the imagination and memory. Notwithstanding the protests of Comte, 

:h, and others, the history of science teems with causal explanations, 
md at the present as much as in the past. Causality is no mere Eldorado 
enticing scientists away from their proper business. The tendency to causal 
explanation has its roots deep in human nature, and is essential to human 
thought. It is the Principle of Identity applied to time ; and the Principle 
of Identity constitutes the very basis of thought. This gives the keynote 
of the whole book. Scientific principles are examined, with almost a 
superabundance of historical detail, in order to bring to light the subtle 

which the Principle of Identity plays in each of them. Their evolu- 
ion is presented in the light of a conflict of two opposing tendencies the 
tendency of Thought to find identity and unity in all things, and the 
tendency of Sense to accept the reality of infinite variety and incessant 
change. In so far as phenomena are amenable to the Principle of Identity 
they are intelligible or " rational " ; in so far as they are not so amenable 
they are unintelligible or " irrational."" 

In the mechanical interpretation of nature, the Principle of Identity 
prompts the reduction of all phenomena of change to movements of atoms 
which persist unchanged. The fact that there are so many views of the 
nature of these ultimate particles, and that they are all so readily 
accepted, suggests that the main feature in all these theories is that some- 
thing persists in the flux, while what it is that persists is only of secondary 
interest. Apparently any X will do, provided it can be regarded as 
permanently self-identical. As guiding ideas, mechanism and atomism 
have been, and still are, of great service to science. But they only indicate 
the direction, not the goal, of science ; if, per impossibile., they could be 
erected into a complete system, they would be quite unsatisfactory. The 
reason is explained partly in the course of an examination of the Principles 
of Inertia, of the Conservation of Matter, and of Energy, to which the 
author then turns his attention. 

The communication of motion by impact, simple as it appears through 
familiarity, is really unintelligible ; and action at a distance is as mysterious 
as self-movement. The Principle of Inertia cannot, therefore, be altogether 
a priori. Nor is it altogether a posteriori. It has something of the nature 
of both. The a priori Principle of Identity predisposes us to find some- 
thing persisting ; and any suggestion of experience as to what persists, at 
once appears plausible. Similarly with the Principle of the Conservation 
of Matter. Experiment can verify it only roughly. It rests, according to 
Maxwell, on foundations deeper than experience. Yet it is not a priori, 



212 THE HIBBERT JOURNAL 

but " plausible," that is, intermediate between a priori and a posteriori, as 
just explained. Lastly, the Principle of the Conservation of Energy is not 
proved experimentally. The constant dissipation of energy renders such 
proof impossible ; and we do not even know all the forms of energy. 
M. Poincare has remarked on the tendency to reduce the Principle of the 
Conservation of Energy to " a kind of tautology ," formulating that " there 
is something which remains constant." The spirit of the Principle of 
Identity is manifest. Descartes based the conservation of energy directly 
on the immutability of God. So did Joule, who argued that the power 
with which God had endowed matter could not be added to or diminished. 
Remembering that to Descartes and Joule " God " was the symbol of the 
general order of nature, of the essential immutability of things, these views 
confirm the role which the Principle of Identity plays in that of the 
Conservation of Energy, which is thus made " plausible." 

One striking result of the influence of the Principle of Identity is the 
tendency to eliminate time. In Chemistry, for instance, it is assumed, to 
start with, that there are so many essentially different and unalterable 
elements. Strictly speaking, the sign =, in chemical equations, does not 
imply equivalence. Its legitimate meaning would be expressed more 
accurately by -, because a chemical equation only represents the transition 
from the term on the left to that on the right side of the equation, the 
process being irreversible. " Le chimiste qui, dans un laboratoire, tente 
de refaire une operation de chimie organique un pen compliquee sait quelle 
ironie cache bien souvent ce signe d'egalite." Unconsciously, however, the 
sign = does express the belief or hope that the related terms are at bottom 
identical. And when this process of equating is carried to its logical 
conclusion we arrive at the conception of a Totality which persists un- 
changed throughout time, and to which time is, consequently, of no account. 
At this stage Causality itself disappears, and we have a kind of Sphere of 
Parmenides, to which, in fact, the Nebular Hypothesis bears some 
resemblance. 

Just as the Principle of Identity tends towards the elimination of Time, 
so the conception of the Unity of Matter tends towards the elimination of 
Space, which is supplanted by, or identified with, Matter. Although no 
experiments necessitate the abandonment of the fixity of the several 
chemical elements, and although it is actually easier to explain chemical 
phenomena by reference to a multiplicity of ultimately heterogeneous 
elements than by reference to one kind of element only, yet there is a 
decided tendency in the latter direction. The air is full of " transmuta- 
tions " of elements. The unity of matter is, in fact, the secret postulate 
of all atomism. Matter is by degrees refined away into an ether whose 
properties are those of vacuum. The position that confronts us then is 
this : Causality explains away all " becoming " or change, by finding the 
persistence of the cause in the effect. The Unity of Matter explains away 
"being" by reducing even ultimate, immutable reality to space. The 
world seems emptied of its content ! But reality resists this strange 



; 



r" 

* 



IDENTITY AND REALITY 213 

culmination of Mechanism, and the Principle of Identity which prompts 
it. And this revolt of nature is embodied in the Principle of Carnot. 

This principle voices the claims of change, of evolution in one irrever- 
sible direction. Its very form is significant. Most physical laws are in 
the form of an equation ; they express equality, for they express the tendency 
towards identity. The Principle of Carnot is expressed in the form of an 
inequality, because it proclaims the reality of change. And this self- 
assertion of Change seems such a stumbling-block to scientific explanation 
that attempts have been made to explain it away by means of the con- 
ception of periodicity, which would bring change itself within reach of the 
principle of Identity. And here we may note the paradox of explanation. 
Phenomena changing with time, and in one irreversible direction, are 
explained causally, that is, as identical in time, although the flux seems 
more obvious and more important for us to know. By accepting the 
principle of Carnot, however, science comes under the direction of both 
principles Identity and Change. The principle of Change controls the 
purely " legal " part of science, the discovery of uniformities ; the principle 

Identity is at the basis of all causal explanations. 

Sensations are considered next. According to Mechanism these are 
subjective and epiphenomenal. After depriving reality of all equalities, 
no room is left for sensations. But then Mechanism is left in this extra- 
ordinary plight : the phenomena of change, of which it purports to be 
the ultimate explanation, are in the first instance our sensations ; if, then, 
our sensations are nothing, Mechanism itself is an explanation of nothing ! 
The fact is that sensations defy mechanical explanation. The relation 
between sensations and their physical stimuli is unintelligible, " irrational." 
Sensations are outside the mechanical system. But even within the 
ystem there are " irrational " factors. The action of one body on 

other is ultimately as unintelligible as is its action on the senses. This 
-ct received due recognition in Occasionalism. Mechanism thus involves 
wo " irrationals," one subjective, the other objective. In reality nothing 

gained by reducing the " theological " causality of the free-will to the 
ientific causality of one material body acting on another. 
Turning to non-mechanical theories of nature, that is, theories which 

sit the ultimate reality of certain qualities, without attempting to 

plain the " being " of these qualities, M. Meyerson shows the part played 
y the principle of Identity in these also, and then passes on to examine 
unconscious logic of common sense. The naive realism of common 

nse is prompted by the same motives which guide scientific theory. We 

perience sensations which do not altogether depend on our volition, and 
they recur in the same combinations after the lapse of an interval. 
Prompted by the tendency towards causal explanation, we hypostatise these 
sensations as qualities and things supposed to persist in time, and to 
stimulate these sensations of ours. The scientist, it has been said, makes 
scientific facts out of brute facts. This is true, but the scientist is only 
ying further the same process whereby common sense makes its brute 



214 THE HIBBERT JOURNAL 

facts. At bottom, brute facts, like scientific facts and theories, are only 
causal hypotheses. 

Limits of space do not permit us to follow M. Meyerson any further. 
Already one may see more difficulties raised than solved. And his treat- 
ment of sensation and common sense is provoking. It would surely be far 
more accurate to treat sensations as the subjectification of qualities than 
to treat qualities as the hypostases of sensations. In any case no such 
process is carried out consciously. To say that this hypostasis takes place 
unconsciously can only mean that it is logically involved in our appre- 
hension of reality. But is it ? Is it not simpler, and no less justifiable, to 
assume that somehow we do apprehend reality directly, and just as it is ? 

However, although there are various points on which one may not agree 
with M. Meyerson, the book will be found none the less interesting and 
suggestive. Nor is M. Meyerson unprepared for differences of opinion. 

A. WOLF. 
UNIVERSITY COLLEGE, LONDON. 



Father and Son. London : Heinemann, 1907. 

THE author of this book, a well-known literary man. whose name is no 
secret, has imposed upon himself a most difficult and delicate task. He 
has told us the story of his relations as an only child to a father who was 
entirely devoted to his son's eternal interests. The story is a very tragic 
one, for by the time or before the time when the son reached manhood, 
father and son had drifted hopelessly apart in those matters on which the 
father's interest was concentrated. The plot works itself out by an 
inexorable fate, and neither is at all to blame. Almost the last words of 
the book, the very last words recorded of the father, are terrible in their 
intensity of pain : " If this grace were granted to you " the grace, that is, 
of return to the religion of his early days "oh! how joyfully should I 
bury all the past, and again have sweet and tender fellowship with my 
beloved son, as of old." Now, most people will feel at once that relation- 
ships of this sort, complete and enthusiastic communion in the highest 
things, ending in no less complete estrangement, are too sacred and 
intimate to be spoken of, far too sacred and intimate to be set in print 
and revealed to the public. This objection is strengthened by the fact 
that the account of the society in which the writer was bred contains many 
incidents, many even of the father's sayings and doings, which are 
ludicrous in the highest degree. Moreover, they lose nothing in the 
telling, for the book is pervaded with the keenest sense of humour and the 
narrative never fails in picturesqueness and dramatic power. Yet after all 
we are convinced that Dr Gosse, for we need no longer scruple to give the 
author his real name, has been well advised to write the book. We believe 
that it will hold an abiding place in literature as an honest, faithful, 



FATHER AND SON 215 

powerful record of spiritual life. It was not right that such classic and 
typical portraiture should be withheld from the world at large. Nor are 
the evils of publication such as might have been feared. They have been 
avoided by the exquisite tact and the fine feeling of the narrator. If we 
laugh sometimes at the father's simplicity, we never lose our respect, we 
may add, our love, for him. From first to last he is exhibited in his genuine 
character, as a noble and high-minded gentleman, one of whom a son may 
well be proud. Whatever the defects of his religion may have been, he at 
least held it with profound sincerity and moulded into strict accordance 
with it the minutest details of his daily life. 

The author's father and mother married late in life, some sixty years 
ago. He was a distinguished naturalist, though his numerous books, despite 
their high repute, brought him little money. She had written a volume of 
religious verse, which had enjoyed some slight success in its day, and has 
long since been forgotten. Both had joined a hyper-Calvinistic sect, 
calling itself the "Brethren, 1 " 1 and known to the outer world as the 
Plymouth Brethren." They had no paid ministry, but met every Sunday 
lorning for prayer and exhortation, and for the "breaking of bread." 
Meetings of an evangelistic kind were held in the evening, and the elder 
Mr Gosse preached twice every week in a hired hall at Hackney. From 
the time of his birth their only child was dedicated to God. " We have 
given him,"" so the mother wrote in her diary, " to the Lord ; and we trust 
that He will really manifest him to be His own, if he grows up ; and if the 
Lord take him early, we will not doubt that He has taken him to Himself." 
She goes on to express a natural and touching hope that if their child be 
called away early, " we may be spared seeing him suffering in lingering 
illness and much pain." She adds, however, " In this as in all things His 
will is better than what we can choose." She herself was to die after 
lingering agony of cancer, a fate which she bore with heroic fortitude. 

The boy was chiefly educated by his parents. All works of fiction, nay, 
even the improvised stories in which children delight, were rigidly pro- 
hibited. To a large extent the imagination was left uncultivated, with 
the natural result that their child tended to become "positive and 
sceptical." Most of the day the father was hard at work, earning a scanty 
maintenance by his books and essays on natural history. Still the father 
found time for much converse with his son. Indeed, the religious instruc- 
tion which he gave was "incessant," and was "founded on the close 
inspection of the Bible, particularly of the epistles of the New Testament."" 
It is interesting to learn that the " Epistle to the Hebrews," which the 
father read and expounded to his little pupil, verse by verse, were "his earliest 
initiation into the magic of literature." He never forgot "the extra- 
ordinary beauty of the language, the matchless cadences and images of the 
first chapter." Side by side with this literary attraction, there occurred a 
curious instance of the sceptical spirit to which we have just referred. 
Assured by his father that God " would signify His anger if anyone in a 
Christian land bowed down to wood and stone," he deliberately put this 



216 THE HIBBERT JOURNAL 

assertion to the test by offering solemn and explicit worship to a wooden 
chair. He did so with a " trembling heart," but nothing happened, and 
he came to the conclusion that his father " was not really acquainted with 
the divine practice in cases of idolatry. 1 ' Here we may add that the son 
was isolated, not only from converse with persons who were indifferent to 
religion, but also from almost all religious people outside of that small and 
fanatical community known as "the Brethren." Roman Catholics, as a 
matter of course, were looked upon as blind idolaters, and the Pope was 
that man of sin whom the Lord would shortly " destroy with the brightness 
of His coming."" Socinians at the other pole of religious thought were, if 
possible, in still more helpless plight. Nay, the Church of England was 
but " a so-called Church,"" and there was scant reason to believe that many 
of its clergy or laity were "saved." Even Dissenters, as a rule, were 
dangerously lax. This last point is illustrated by an amusing incident. 
The Browns, a family of Baptist drapers, invited young Gosse to " tea and 
games." The father, dreading this allurement of secular dissipation, invited 
his son to lay the matter " before the Lord " in his study. After vocal 
prayer in which the parent called the attention of the Deity "to the snakes 
that lay hid in evening parties," and a pause of silent expectation, the 
father said : " Well, and what is the answer which the Lord vouchsafes ? " 
" The Lord says, I may go to the Browns." " My father gazed at me in 
speechless horror : he was caught in his own trap : yet surely it was an 
error in tactics to slam the door." 

Here, however, we have been anticipating. Before the incident just 
related, the mother had died ; the little family, now in easier circumstances, 
had gone to a new and very pleasant home in Devonshire, and just when 
he was ten years old, the boy testified by receiving baptism, and was 
admitted to the " breaking of bread." Such young discipleship was quite 
unprecedented, and created immense excitement among "the Brethren." 
But the father, with almost incredible imprudence, declared in his son's 
presence and before the whole congregation that his son " was an adult 
in the knowledge of the Lord," and " possessed an insight into the plan 
of salvation which many a hoary head might envy for its fulness, its 
clearness, its conformity with Scripture doctrine." There was at first no 
small opposition but it was borne down when two elders had testified, after 
separate and united conference and examination, to the precocity of the 
young disciple. He was the hero of the hour. " When I am admitted to 
fellowship, papa, shall I be allowed to call you beloved brother ? " " That, 
my love, though strictly correct, would hardly, I fear, be thought judicious." 
When the immersion took place, there were indeed other candidates, but 
the boy attracted all the attention to himself. The blaze of lights, the 
pressure of hands, the ejaculations and tears with which he was led to the 
front row of the congregation, made the scene a dazzling one for him, and 
nobody will be surprised by his confession that " he was puffed up by a 
sense of his own holiness," " haughty with the servants," " insufferably patron- 
ising " with his companions. On one occasion at least his demeanour was 



FATHER AND SON 217 

worse than " patronising, 1 ' for, alas ! during a service in the public room he 
put out his tongue in mockery, to remind the other boys that " he now 
broke bread as one of the Saints, and that they did not." His father 
himself had to suffer from the airs which his son now assumed. He 
married a second time, choosing as his partner an excellent and kindly 
lady to whom both he and his son were deeply indebted. When he 
announced this intention the son, by a curious reversal of the natural order, 
proceeded to cross-examine his father with uplifted finger. " But, papa, is 
she one of the Lord's children ?" "Has she taken up her cross in 
baptism ? " " Papa, don't tell me that she's a pedobaptist." He had but 
lately found out the meaning of that learned term, and was charmed to use 
it in this remarkable way. His father seems to have satisfied him on the 
whole, though allowance had to be made for a lady whose sad misfortune it 
was to have been educated in the national Church, and whose views were not 
yet quite as clear and scriptural as her stepson might have desired. After 
all, she had left the Church for the meeting, and did, after some hesitation, 
see the Lord's will in the matter of baptism." 

We are not told much of the process by which the son, after settling in 
mdon at the age of seventeen, cast off the shackles by which he had been 
md from his earliest childhood. Apparently the change came gradually 
id almost imperceptibly. His old beliefs crumbled and fell without 
ipparently any open and direct attack. It became impossible for him any 
longer to dismiss the beauty of art and the ennobling influences of literature 
secular and profane. A God whose love was limited to a small portion 
>f mankind, united by common theory and common discipline, was plainly 
God at all. It might be urged, and with justice, that Evangelical 
ligion, especially as it has been held within the Church of England, is 
)t responsible for the narrow prejudices and fanaticism of the "Plymouth 
Brethren." Still it is true that Evangelical religion in all its forms has 
too intellectual. It has insisted on the acceptance of theories with 
aspect to the Fall, the Atonement, conversion, etc., which, whether they be 
or no, are matters of intellectual apprehension, and depend on acuteness 
)f mind rather than on spiritual experience. Religion nowadays tends more 
id more to revert to the Christianity of St John : " God is love." " Love is 
God : and every one that loveth is born of God and knoweth God." No 
loubt it also is a very grave defect in the religion of the Plymouth sect, as 
ascribed in this book, that it laid so little stress on the duty of promoting 
le moral and physical improvement of mankind. Surely, however, it 
is a most gross exaggeration to bring this charge against Evangelical 
religion as a whole, or to say that, when Bossuet insisted that we must 
listen " to the cry of misery around which should melt our heart," he 
" started a new thing in the world of theology." What of St Francis, or 
of St Vincent of Paul, or of St Camillus of Lellis ? Was it from Bossuet 
that the English Evangelicals learned to do that noble work for the slave 
and the prisoner, for the ignorant and depraved, to which Mr Lecky has 
borne such eloquent and weighty witness ? Even in its dreariest days the 



218 THE HIBBERT JOURNAL 

Church, whether Roman or High Church or Evangelical, has never quite 
forgotten the saying of the Son of Man: "Forasmuch as ye have done it 
unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me."" 

W. E. ADDIS. 
OXFORD. 



I^e Pragmatisjue, Etude de ses diverses formes^ anglo-amerwaines, fran- 
$aises et italiennes et de sa valeur religwme. Par Marcel Hebert, 
Professeur a TUniversite Nouvelle de Bruxelles. Paris : Emile 
Nourry, 1908. 

PRAGMATISM neglects or obscures a fundamental element in human con- 
sciousness, the sense of subjective and objective reality, which is at the 
root of all philosophies, Idealist and Realist, and which is postulated by 
that common-sense outlook upon the world which Pragmatism professes 
to include in its system. It must be admitted that the mind can only 
know its own sensations, and these only through its categories. In this 
sense it makes its own truth, but in so doing it is bound to posit an external 
reality to which in some sense its categories conform. Mr Schiller says we 
can know nothing certain about this ultimate reality, and that therefore 
this question may be left to Metaphysics, which Pragmatism does not 
profess to meddle with. From the Humanist standpoint we can only make 
our own truth and our own reality, and this we effect by categories which 
we choose because it is found in practice that they " work. 1 " 1 

Pragmatism, however, has not left the metaphysical question alone. 
It has already prejudged the question by denying to external reality any- 
thing but a purely passive existence. It is a " chaos " until ordered by 
mind, not an activity producing certain effects which mind reacts upon and 
interprets. Nor does Mr Schiller thus escape the metaphysical difficulty, 
for if the mind is incapable of judging as to the nature of external reality, 
on what grounds can even such a " chaos " be posited ? It is true that Mr 
Schiller seems to realise the unsatisfactory state in which he leaves the 
question. But then, if he must theorise about it at all (and it is certainly 
difficult to avoid doing so), why not at least choose a theory which accords 
better with the elementary facts of consciousness ? 

In the cognate question, as to the nature of truth, he is not more 
successful. The correspondence-theory need not go beyond phenomena, 
and to these it is strictly applicable. Even if it be granted that we can 
know nothing as to the ultimate nature of things, yet the objectivity of 
truth is implied in the necessary postulate that there is a certain sequence 
and co-existence in phenomena which is independent of the individual 
mind. It is true that there is no absolute standard by which the correct- 
ness of such correspondence can be judged. " Doubtless," says M. Hebert, 
" the thing in itself cannot be compared with the knowledge of it as the 
model with its portrait, but what I do not allow is that there can be no 



PRAGMATISM 219 

likeness between two of our representations ; for example, between that of 
the cathedral at Paris, of which I have the photograph before me, and the 
impression of it which I shall receive when I go to visit it. Similarly, the 
picture, which I have formed in my mind's eye, of primitive man and the 
way he used the flint, either resembles or not the impression I should 
have received if I could have been an eye-witness of this phase of the 
evolution of our race. There is, then, in such a case, resemblance, if not 
4 adaequatio. 1 " 

Individual impressions and theories must be corrected or confirmed 
by the combined critical action of many minds before they can be accepted 
as objective and universal truth. So far the Pragmatist contention holds 
good that truth is made by man, but not that it is merely determined by 
utility. As M. Hebert says, there is this aspect of knowledge, but it is 
not the only aspect. Pragmatism, in limiting knowledge to this aspect, 
ignores a fundamental " working " postulate not only of Metaphysics but 
of Science, and by so doing stultifies itself. This postulate, moreover, 
inevitably leads us back to the question as to the ultimate nature of reality 
on which this assumed correspondence is based. 

Critical philosophy and modern psychology have done much to reduce 
the extent of the a priori element in thought, but this element cannot be 
banished altogether, or ignored, as Pragmatism apparently seeks to do. 
Even if it has been evolved in the whole course of the development of 
mind from its lower forms, the explanations which Pragmatism offers of 
this development seem very inadequate, and, in any case, its origin does 
not destroy its significance. M. Hebert is wrong, however, in denying the 
supreme importance of Will as the fundamental directing agency of 
intellect and feeling, a truth admitted by St Thomas Aquinas in a quota- 
tion given by himself. Yet Pragmatism has exaggerated the principle of 
Voluntarism, at least as a positive principle of action. Its negative value 
is not even considered, and yet this is at least equally important in Science 
and Philosophy. It is the Will which first directs the mind to its objective, 
yet every critic or scientist worthy of the name knows well enough that 
one of the chief functions of the Will, acting with the Reason, is to control 
the feelings and check the desire to obtain results in accordance with 
theory. Now, Pragmatism, as expounded by Messrs William James and 
Schiller, makes such purposeful seeking for results the chief, if not the 
only, principle of scientific action ; whereas it needs to be strictly sub- 
ordinated to the desire for truth for its own sake. Instead of recognising 
that the personal equation must be kept as far as possible in the back- 
ground, Pragmatism elevates it into a kind of first principle of research. 

In its affirmations, as M. Hebert truly observes, Pragmatism is right ; 
in its denials it is wrong. For, in spite of the disclaimers of its chief 
exponents, it tends to turn what is legitimate and even necessary as a 
method into an exclusive system of philosophy ; and, considered from this 
point of view, its claim to kinship with antiquity, with Kant, and with 
modern French philosophy, is, as he shows, unfounded. 



220 THE HIBBERT JOURNAL 

In his chapter on religious Pragmatism M. Hebert falls into the common 
error of identifying the truths of history with those of faith. It is a 
theory which, in the past, has had lamentable consequences for both, and 
in the present has become quite unworkable. 

H. C. CORRANCE. 
HOVE. 



The Apocalypse of St John. The Greek Text, with Introduction, Notes, 
and Indices. By Henry Barclay Swete, D.D. London : Macmillan 
& Co., 1906. 

OF the learning, scholarship, and pains which have been lavished upon 
this volume there can be no doubt. Whether it also displays the qualities 
which are requisite for success in the Higher Criticism is a different 
question. The general attitude assumed by Dr Swete is that of an 
enthusiastic apologist. For this we can no more quarrel with him than 
with an advocate for making the best of his case, especially as we can well 
believe that Dr Swete is himself genuinely convinced of the high character 
of his client. 

The criticism of the Apocalypse presents this singular phenomenon, 
that the orthodox and traditional date assigned to the book, namely, at 
the close of the reign of Domitian, is the later one, whereas the innovating 
view puts it back before the destruction of Jerusalem into the reign of 
Vespasian or Nero. Dr Swete is rightly, I think in favour of the 
traditional view. But the other possessed great attraction for those who 
were anxious to refer to the son of Zebedee everything which went under 
the name of John. For while it was manifestly impossible to regard both 
the Gospel and the Revelation as the work of the same author at the 
same time of life, it seemed more feasible to suppose that the Son of 
Thunder had fulminated his truculent Revelation at an earlier stage of 
his career, and had afterwards mellowed with age into the benign Apostle of 
Love, when his Greek also had been improved by a long residence at 
Ephesus. Dr Swete, indeed, warns us (p. clxxx) that " the question of the 
authorship of the Apocalypse must not be complicated by considerations 
connected with the still more vexed question of the authorship of the 
Fourth Gospel." It is not easy to follow this admonition, seeing that 
from the earliest times the two books have been ascribed to one man. 
Still let us do our best to isolate the question of the authorship of the 
Apocalypse. 

The book declares itself to be the work of one John, who nowhere 
claims to be an Apostle in the way that is done by Peter and by Paul. 
He speaks in one passage (xxi. 14) of the holy city Jerusalem, that came 
down from heaven, having twelve foundations, and on them the twelve 
names of the twelve Apostles of the Lamb. But there is no suggestion 
that one of those names is his own. Who then is this John who wrote 



THE APOCALYPSE 221 

the Apocalypse ? He tells the Seven Churches of Asia (xix.) that he is 
their " brother and partaker with " them " in the tribulation and kingdom 
and patience which are in Jesus " ; also that he was then in the island of 
Patmos, " for the Word of God and the testimony of Jesus, 11 and that, 
being " in the Spirit on the Lord^ Day," he heard and saw the things 
which he wrote to the Churches. It is evident from this that the writer 
was, above all things, a prophet. This point is well brought out by 
Dr Swete (p. xvi) : " Both in the prologue and in the epilogue, the work 
of John lays claim to a prophetic character ; and in the heart of the book 
the writer represents himself as hearing a voice which warns him, Thou 
must prophesy again. Moreover, it is clear that he is not a solitary 
prophet, but a member of an order which occupies a recognised and 
important position in the Christian societies of Asia. His ' brother 
prophets 1 are mentioned, and they appear to form the most conspicuous 
circle in the local Churches. 11 Thus the Pauline constitution of the 
Asiatic Churches was in abeyance, and the monarchical episcopate of the 
time of the Ignatian letters had not yet been introduced. Meantime, the 
prophets were in Jewish fashion the leaders. Just as Hermas was the 
prophet of the Roman Church, so John was the prophet of the Churches 
of Asia. This is all that we know of the author, except that he was a 
bigoted Jew, while, at the same time, he was a fervent follower of Christ. 
He is just such a leader as we might expect would arise long after all 
Asia had turned away from Paul. 

This brings us to a point on which I venture to think that Dr Swete 
has gone wholly astray. He everywhere speaks as though Jews were re- 
garded as enemies by the author of the Apocalypse (e.g. pp. Ixx, Ixxxix, xci, 
cxxiii). Is this likely in a book in which the world to come is constructed 
specially for the benefit of Jews ? Now this is a point of primary import- 
ance. If Dr Swete has gone wrong here, then, however much we may 
respect his learning, we must beg leave to doubt his judgment. Let the 
reader consider the question for himself. It turns upon what we under- 
stand by " the blasphemy of them which say they are Jews, and they are 
not, but are a synagogue of Satan " (ii. 9 ; cp. iii. 9). Are these the words 
of one who is denying Jews to be Jews? Or of one who is rejecting a 
claim to the honourable name of " Jew " on the part of some whom he 
deems unworthy of it ? 

Let us turn now to the linguistic aspect of the problem, on which 
Dr Swete has bestowed much care. " The Apocalypse, 11 he tells us 
(p. cxv), "contains 913 distinct words, or, excluding the names of persons 
and places, 871. Of these 871 words, 108 are not used elsewhere in the 
New Testament, and 98 are used elsewhere in the New Testament but 
once, or by but one other writer. 11 Dr Swete then appends a list of 108 
words in the Apocalypse which occur in no other New Testament writing. 
But from this list must be excluded /ce'pa?, which is to be found in Luke 
i. 69, and to it there should be added ap/coy, ey^piav, e\<f>dvTivo$, 
crrprjviav, xX/ceo?, all of which will be found in the Index 



222 THE HTBBERT JOURNAL 

of Greek words at the end, duly marked with the star which shows that 
they occur nowhere else in the New Testament. But the list of 108 words, 
according to Dr Swete's statement, ought not to include proper names, 
and it does include 5 (if, for the present purpose, we define a proper name 
as a word beginning with a capital), namely, 'ApaSSwv, 'ATroXXiW, "Ap, 
Maye&m/ (the last two being entered separately in the Index), Nj/coXouV*/?. 
For these and /cepa? let us substitute the 6 words supplied above, and we 
shall still have the 108 words other than proper names, which Dr Swete 
has told us we ought to have. 

In discussing the question whether there is any literary affinity between 
the Fourth Gospel and the Apocalypse, Dr Swete states the facts with 
perfect candour. He points out, to begin with, that there are only 8 
words, common to these two books, which occur nowhere else in the New 
Testament. But the only remark he makes is that " they do not supply a 
sufficient basis for induction," as if the inference to be drawn did not rest 
upon their fewness. The 8 words in question are apviov, 'EjSpafor/, 
KvicXeveiv, oijsi?, Trop<j>vpeo$, crKtjvovv, <j>oivt. Of these, KVK\veiv must be 
excluded, if we go by the Revisers 1 text (John x. 24) ; but, on the other 
hand, the same text omits SeKaros in Acts xix. 9, so that that word (John 
i. 39 ; Rev. xi. 13, xxi. 20) may take the place of KVK\evetv. Now, with this 
list of 8 words compare the 57 which occur in the New Testament only in 
the Third Gospel and Acts. Yet Dr Swete actually speaks of the evidence 
being divided. " If," he says (pp. cxxii, cxxiii), " we extend our examina- 
tion to words which, though not exclusively used in these books, are promi- 
nent in them or in one of them, the evidence is similarly divided. On the 
one hand, there are not a few points in which the diction of the Apocalypse 
differs notably from that of the Gospel ; the conjunctions dXXd, yap, ovv, 
which continually meet the reader of the Gospel, are comparatively rare in 
the Apocalypse ; evwiriov, a characteristic preposition in the Apocalypse, 
occurs but once in the Gospel ; the Evangelist invariably writes 
'le/oocro'Av/xa, the Apocalyptist 'Ie/oowraX>7yu ; the one chooses a/xj/o? when he 
is speaking of the Lamb of God, the other apviov ; to the one the Eternal 
Son is simply o Xoyo?, to the other the glorified Christ is o Xo'yo? rov Oeov. 
The Apocalyptist uses the Synoptic and Pauline terms 
KypvcrcreLV, K\rjpovojuLeiv 9 /meTavoeiv, /mvpTTiptov, 
iv, from which the Evangelist seems to refrain ; while on the 
other hand, as Dionysius long ago pointed out, of many of the key-words of 
the Gospel he shows no knowledge. On the other hand, the two books have 
in common a fair number of characteristic words and phrases, such as 
aXyOtvos, egovaria, /ULaprvpeiv, vticav, oSriyelv, olSa, orrjuaiveiv, rrjpeiv (\6yov, 
evroXriv), virayeiv. It is still more significant that both attach a special 
meaning to certain words ; both use 'lovSaios of the Jew considered as 
hostile to Christ or the Church, and in both such words as far], Oavaro?, 
St\fsav, Treivavy vv/uL<f>ri, Soga, bear more or less exclusively a spiritual sense 
a remark which applies also to several of the words mentioned above (e.g. 
VLKUV, 



THE APOCALYPSE 223 

On all questions of fact this presentation of the evidence is beyond 
reproach. But listen to the remarkable summing up which follows! 
" Thus on the question of the literary affinity of the Fourth Gospel and 
the Apocalypse, the vocabulary speaks with an uncertain sound, though 
the balance of the evidence is perhaps in favour of some such relationship 
between the two writings." " Some such relationship " must mean that 
there is a literary affinity between the two writings ; whereas, if anything 
in literary criticism is certain, it is certain that there is not. In saying 
this, I mean that on grounds of literary criticism it is impossible to ascribe 
the Fourth Gospel and the Apocalypse to one and the same author. 
What Dr Swete means by "a literary affinity" it would be difficult to 
say precisely. But he is all the time of the same opinion which I have 
just expressed. "It is incredible," he says later, "that the writer of the 
Gospel could have written the Apocalypse without a conscious effort 
savouring of literary artifice " (p. clxxviii). And then he intimates that it 
is to him equally incredible that the writer of the Apocalypse should ever 
have come to write the Gospel. That the two books are not by the same 
author was clearly shown in the third century by Dionysius of Alexandria, 
and might by this time be taken for granted. 

What then is Dr Swete's opinion as to the authorship of the Apocalypse ? 
Here are his own words (p. clxxxi) : " While inclining to the traditional 
view which holds that the author of the Apocalypse was the Apostle John, 
the present writer desires to keep an open mind upon the question. Fresh 
evidence may at any time be produced which will turn the scale in favour 
of the Elder." But why should the authorship be assumed to lie between 
the Apostle and the Elder ? Were there no Johns but these two at the 
close of the reign of Domitian ? Dr Swete himself points out that some 
twenty-five persons of this name are mentioned in the Greek Bible, and 
seventeen in Josephus. 

Dr Swete has shown in a convincing way the literary unity of the 
Apocalypse (pp. xlii-xliv), and is perfectly justified in saying (p. xlvii) 
that "No theory with regard to the sources of the Apocalypse can be 
satisfactory which overlooks the internal evidence of its essential unity." 
But unity of authorship is quite compatible with inconsequence of thought, 
a fact which the seekers after " sources " seem to overlook. Dr Swete does 

best to minimise the inconsequence, but his attempt to read " some- 
like cosmic order and progress " into the chaos of the Apocalypse is 
best an ingenious failure. He would have done better to accept the 
analysis of Andreas, which is just such as any reader without a theory 
would be likely to make. In what intelligible sense can the Measuring of 
the Temple and the Two Witnesses be called a " preparation " for the 
Seventh Trumpet ? 

Space and time forbid the discussion of a number of interesting points. 
But we cannot close without some reference to Dr Swete's general view of 
the Apocalypse. He regards the book as being "in some respects the 
crown of the New Testament canon " (p. x). He tells us also that it is 



224 THE HIBBERT JOURNAL 

" a treasure of which the full value is even now scarcely realised " (p. cxiv). 
Even the obscurity of the work he regards as " not the least valuable of 
its characteristics, for it affords scope for the exercise of the Christian 
judgement "(p. cxxix). What kind of judgement is this? Evidently not 
a frankly human judgement. Perhaps, then, a judgement which is free, 
except in so far as some supposed necessities of Christianity are involved. 
Or is Dr Swete here speaking as in his note on p. 216, where he says : 
" As Arethas points out, the wisdom which is demanded is a higher gift 
than ordinary intelligence." If this be so, one had better hold one's 
peace. For ordinary intelligence would lead one to suppose that the 
" solemn claim to veracity " conveyed by the assertion, " These are God's 
words, and they are true," did " require belief in the literal fulfilment of 
the details " ; but Dr Swete assures us that " of course " it does not (p. 244). 
He holds up to our admiration the example of the great Dionysius of 
Alexandria, who " with the modesty of the true scholar " was " ready to 
attribute the difficulties presented by the Apocalypse to the limitations of 
his own understanding." It is seductive to think that, if one is modest in 
this matter, one may be pronounced a true scholar by so good a judge as 
Dr Swete, but it is well to remember that we might on the same principle 
be called upon to abase our intelligence before the Book of Mormon or 
Zadkiel's Almanac. 

ST GEORGE STOCK. 
OXFORD. 



The Terms Life and Death in the Old and New Testaments, and other 
Papers. By Lewis A. Muirhead, D.D. London : Andrew Melrose, 
1908. 

THE opening paper, which gives its title to this volume, was originally 
delivered before the Oxford Society of Historical Theology. The second 
and third, upon "Eschatology in the Consciousness of our Lord," were 
delivered as lectures at Durham, the second also appearing as an article 
in the recent Dictionary of Christ and the Gospels. The fourth is a survey, 
reprinted from the Review of Theology and Philosophy , of "Recent 
Literature on Jewish Eschatology, with special reference to the conscious- 
ness of Jesus." The eschatology of the primitive Church is perplexing 
enough, partly owing to the scantiness of the records, and partly owing 
to the heterogeneous character of the Jewish tradition. But the difficulties 
are heightened when the consciousness of Jesus is investigated in this 
province ; any student of this problem has become sadly accustomed to 
treatises which either develop bright speculative reconstructions of Christ's 
mind, or else fail to disentangle the ideas of Christ from the apostolic 
strata of the gospels. The modernisers evaporate, the verbalists petrify, 
the mind of Jesus on the future. Dr Muirhead has managed to avoid both 
extremes in his role of interpreter. He writes as a Christian scholar, and 
his Christian faith is as unobtrusive and genuine as his critical sagacity. 



This book is 



THEOLOGICAL ESSAYS 225 



iis book is not to be taken as a complete solution of the vital problem 
to which its three later sections are addressed. Its construction, for one 
thing, tends to suggestiveness rather than completeness of argument; 
the good things in it are scattered instead of being drawn together. But 
the patient, wise spirit which its pages breathe is a real contribution to 
the question, and there are bits of criticism and reflection to which one 
finds oneself turning back for further study. 

Dr Muirhead now accepts the " small apocalypse " theory of Mark xiii. 
(and parallels), on which formerly he hesitated (pp. 124 f.). " We think 
it unnatural to suppose that a person of such holy originality as Jesus 
spoke, when he dealt with the future especially with the future in which 
he had a unique personal interest in the style of a book of apocalypse." 
But that Jesus used the apocalyptic style at certain seasons or in certain 
moods of his life, Dr Muirhead has no doubt. Jesus believed in his 
Messianic calling. He predicted the near downfall of the Jewish nation. 
But " through the telescope of Jewish particularity he was looking out 
upon the whole human world "" (p. 70). The elusive element in all such 
sayings on the future is attributed in part to their aphoristic, pictorial 
character, in part to the fact that he was always laying a spiritual 
emphasis upon the religious certainty which these predictions expressed 
in the form of definite, temporal statements. This line of explanation is 
worked out tentatively but persuasively, upon the whole. We only wish 
that the author had taken space to apply it in detail to the gospel records. 
As it is, however, the mental poise of the discussion, with its combination of 
frankness and faith, is an admirable illustration of how an open-eyed Christian 
criticism of the gospels can do justice alike to the divine consciousness of 
Jesus and also to the limitations of his teaching in the evangelic records. 

There are many happy sayings thrown out in the course of these papers. 
Here are three, culled at random : " The correspondences of fulfilment to 
prophecy are largely contrasts, and the impressiveness of history is perhaps 
mainly due to these contrasts."" " The hope of God's people is doubtless a 
new world, but the heart of the new world is new men and women."" " The 
New Testament writings offer singularly convincing witness to the fact that 
the moral foundations, on which all that is best in our modern civilisation 
has been built, were in the first generation of Christians linked to a form of 
eschatological doctrine which, in one feature of it, had no relevance except to 
that generation." The attentive reader will find, before he reads this volume 
very far, that such sentences are more than the work of a phrase-maker. 

The book is designed, we are told in the preface, " mainly for young 
theological students, yet it will, perhaps, not be found on the whole too 
technical for laymen who are interested in theology."" One would feel 
more comfortable about its prospects of success, in the former quarter at 
least, were it less modest! The candid, unpretentious, and even naive 
character of some of its pages may hide from the aforesaid student the 
genuine ability of the writer to instruct even the youngest of his readers. 
But perhaps this is the vain fear of a reviewer who is ignorant that 
VOL. VII. -No. 1. 15 



226 THE HIBBERT JOURNAL 

theological students have added humility to their other virtues during 
the past fifteen years. Laymen, at any rate, need not be afraid that any 
undue " technicalities'" will trip them up in the study of the volume. 

Boussefs name is misprinted on p. 129, and "fallen"" (on p. 93) seems 
an awkward word, if it is not a misprint for " taken." 

JAMES MOFFATT. 
BROUGHTY FERRY, N.B. 



The Book of Exodus, with Introduction and Notes. By A. H. M'Neile, 
B.D. Methuen & Co. (Westminster Commentaries.) 

THE Hexateuch was lately called, to my knowledge, " a not very interesting 
part of the Bible." The author of this statement would probably agree 
with the opinion which Mr M'Neile has " heard seriously expressed," that 
Exodus is " one of the dullest books " of the sacred library. But he would 
be of a singularly stubborn and unreceptive mind if, after perusing the 
present work, he did not see well, as far as Exodus is concerned, to 
withdraw his remark and change his mind unreservedly. 

A good English commentary on Exodus, with up-to-date critical and 
archaeological matter, was needed, and Mr M'Neile has given us a good one. 
He attacks the problems of Exodus with critical boldness, but at the same 
time the spirit of religious earnestness is manifest throughout. In his 
remarks about the " miracles " of Exodus (pp. xcvii, cx-cxii, 43-46) the 
writer adopts the view that they "had a basis in 'natural' facts," and 
that the " wonderful element " consisted in the opportuneness with which 
they occurred. But this, after all, is merely to move the difficulty a step 
or two further back, and one cannot but ask why " natural " events should 
be invested with a miraculous character at all ? That the Hebrew writers 
chose to do so, that they loved to believe that the very elements had to 
render their ancestors service at God's command, that " the stars in their 
courses fought against Sisera," is one thing, but that we should accept this 
belief and persuade ourselves that God worked wholesale damage and loss 
of life in order to free His people, is quite another. The imaginative 
element which the writers introduced into their stories reaches its climax in 
the death of " all the first-born in the land of Egypt, from the first-born of 
Pharaoh that sat on his throne, unto the first-born of the captive that 
was in the dungeon ; and all the first-born of cattle " (xii. 29), and 
Mr M'Neile admits (p. 46) that any thought of a " natural " event is here 
out of place. We are in the presence of miracle ! 

In the Introduction, which consists of one hundred and thirty-six 
pages, the writer treats of the analysis of the book, the laws, the 
geography, the historical and religious value, and other subjects, while 
there are several " Additional and Longer Notes " imbedded in the Text 
and Commentary. In our search for information Mr M'Neile does not 
often disappoint us, and he has given us so abundantly of his treasures 



BOOK OF EXODUS 227 

that one feels rather greedy in asking for more. But surely the phrases 
"of uncircumcised lips" (p. 36), and " move his tongue" (p. 61), require 
some explanation; and we are not told much about the "ban" (p. 135), 
and "the Hittites" are quite unnoticed (pp. 12, 13, 17). Attention 
should have been drawn, too, to the archaisms of the Revised Version, more 
especially as Dr Driver's Genesis gave such a good lead in this respect. 
A very short note suffices for the word " Hebrew " (p. 4), and does not 
contain any mention of the Habiri. The article by Spiegelberg in 
O.L.Z., Dec. 1907, might be read in this connection, and his reference 
to Knudtzon consulted. The statement on p. 76, " It is impossible, 
therefore, to uphold both the Biblical chronology and the identity 
of Amraphel and Hammurabi," must be modified by a reference to King, 
Studies in Eastern History, ii. p. 22 (1907), "Our new information 
enables us to accept unconditionally the identification of Amraphel with 
Hammurabi, and at the same time it shows that the chronological system 
of the Priestly Writer, however artificial, was calculated from data more 
accurate than has hitherto been supposed." In the note on " Cherubim " 
(p. 160) some reference to their supposed representation on the Altar of 
Incense discovered by Dr Sellin at Taanach is expected. As, moreover, 
Josephus (Ant. III. vi. 5) describes them as " winged creatures," it is hardly 
accurate to say that " as early as Josephus all knowledge of their appearance 
had been lost." 

The Bibliography (pp. XVII.-XX.), which, as the author remarks, 
" might be greatly enlarged," should have included Spiegelberg's interesting 
pamphlet Der Aufenihalt Israels in Aegypten (4. Auflage, 1904) ; Cheyne, 
Traditions and Beliefs of Ancient Israel (1907) ; Stade, Biblische Theologie 
des Alien Testaments (1905) ; and Dibelius, Die Lade Jahves (1906). 

A few typographical slips have been noted. Paul Haupt (not Harper, 
as stated in the footnotes, pp. 89, 90) annotated the Song of Moses in 
the American Journal of Semitic Languages, and the correct title of 
ReicheFs book (p. 163) is Uber die vorhellenischen Gotterkulte. 

The volume includes a sketch of the tabernacle and a map of the 
country of the Exodus. 

P. J. BOYER. 

NORTHAMPTON. 



, 



lesiae Occidentalis Monumenta Juris Antiquissima, Canonum et Con- 
ciliorum Graecorum Interpret ationes Latinae . . . edidit C. H. Turner 
Tomi Secundi Pars Prior. Oxonii : e Typographeo Clarendoniano, 
1907. 



OF the first volume of Mr Turner's definitive edition of the Canons of the 
earliest Councils in Latin two portions of the first volume have appeared, 
containing the Apostolic Canons and the Canons of the Council of Nicaea. 
The remainder of volume one is still unpublished, and it is only because the 
now published part of the second volume has been in type for some con- 



228 THE HIBBERT JOURNAL 

siderable time that it has appeared before the concluding part of the first 
volume. It contains the Canons of the Councils of Ancyra and Neocaesarea, 
which are of great interest to the historian of morals. The title of the 
work as a whole is not sufficiently comprehensive, because it will include 
the Canons of Sardica, the original language of which is Latin, and it is a 
critical rather than a historical work. The editor justly considers that 
exact critical work must precede that of the historian : we may hope that 
he will undertake the latter office later, as no one is better fitted for it. 

Of the Canons of Ancyra and Neocaesarea six Latin translations in all 
are presented, with a double critical apparatus, one containing real 
manuscript variants, the other orthographical. Mr Turner has gone to the 
very oldest manuscripts, one being as old as the sixth century. Their 
excellence is not always in proportion to their age seventh and eighth 
century manuscripts are generally inferior in character to those of the 
fifth, sixth, and ninth centuries and there has therefore been considerable 
scope for emendation. Mr Turner, well acquainted with palaeographical 
possibilities as well as the Greek original of these versions, has proved 
himself always a skilful, sometimes a certain, emender. It is not, however, 
always possible to agree with his proposals : for example, on p. 226, vii., I 
should read multotiens as the rarer word (cf. p. 246, xiv., 1. 7), probably a 
colloquial formation on the analogy of aliquotiens ; again, on p. 236, x. title, 
destupratae would be nearer the corrupt distipulatae than is the simple 
stupratae ; it is true that the word is unexampled, but so are others in 
these translations (compare too constupro, obstupro) ; p. 30, ix., 1. 1, the 
reading of the manuscripts is best explained by the supposition that the 
orthography peccauitse for peccauisse intervened between the original 
peccauisse and peccauit. The notes elucidating the language are always 
useful, but the Latin Thesaurus should sometimes have been cited instead 
of Neue-Wagener's Formenlehre ; and Ronsch^s references might have been 
supplemented occasionally from later works for instance, on prode non 
fecerit (p. 91). The passage from Paulinus of Nola which he could not 
find (p. 31) is given by Georges as "epist. xi., 10." Mr Turner's own 
Latin is so good that we resent inceperat for coeperat (p. 53) ; correct also 
Monaci to Monachii (p. 135). 

These old translations are a valuable, and I think un worked, mine of 
vulgar Latin, and are of the greatest importance to Latin and Romance 
philologists. They add to the Latin vocabulary and to the known mean- 
ings of words, and illustrate besides the history of Latin orthography, in a 
way which will yet prove useful to editors of texts, both classical and 
Christian. It is to be hoped that at the end of the work Mr Turner will 
provide full vocabularies to increase its value. Reference must meantime 
be made to the valuable excursuses on the vulgar forms " grades," " partos," 
and "domos," as well as to the history of the forms "digamus" and 
" bigamus." 

ALEX. SOUTER. 
OXFORD. 



BIBLIOGRAPHY 

OF RECENT BOOKS AND ARTICLES. 



A RELIGION 1 Nature 2 Philos. 3 
Psychol. 8 Christianity 10 Nat. Relig. 
15 Relig. and Science. 

1 Michelet (G.) Une re"cente theorie fran- 
caise sur la religion. R. prat. d'Apologet. , 

May 15, June 1, and July 1, 1908. 
[Criticism of a sociological theory of religion 
which regards it as a function of the Society and 
denies the possibility of a religious psychology.] 

Spiller (Gustav) Faith in Man, the 

Religion of the Twentieth Century. 196p. 

Sonnenschein, 1908. 

2 Holland (Henry Scott} The Optimism of 
Butler's "Analogy." (Romanes Lecture, 
1908.) 48p. Frowde, 1908. 

[Butler appeals to us to go forward through 
Natural Eeligion to Revelation. He grounds 
himself on man's strength, not on man's weakness. 
He will have nothing to do with those who argue 
from man's blindness and Nature's darkness to 
the necessity of a Revelation to release us from 
despair.] 

Dresser (Horatio W.) The Philosophy 
of the Spirit : A Study of the Spiritual 
Nature of Man and the Presence of God, 
with a Supplementary Essay on the Logic of 
Hegel. 559p. Putnam, 1908. 

Gayraud (Abbe) Les vieilles preuves de 
1'eiistence de Dieu. 

Rev. de Phil., July, Aug. 1908. 

[An elaborate examination of a recent article 
by Le Roy.] 

3 Caillard (Emma Marie) Subjective 
Science in Ordinary Life. 

Cont. R., July 1908. 

[A plea for subjective science, the recognition 
by men of what they are, as a means of bringing 
about the revolution that is needed in modern 
life.] 

Moisant (Xavier) Psychologic de 1'In- 
croyant. (Bibliotheque Apologetique. ) 
339p. Beauchesne, 1908. 

[Book i. Le Railleur. Voltaire, his philosophy, 
criticism, morality, and polemical activity. 
Book ii. Pontivitm. Auguste Comte. Book iii. 
L'Intettectuel. Charles Renouvier. Conclusion.] 

4 Mitehell (Henry Bedinger) Talks on 
Religion : A Collective Inquiry. 325p. 

Longmans, 1908. 

[Record of a series of meetings held last winter. 
The company, drawn partly from among the 
Professors of a great university, partly from the 
business, literary, and ecclesiastic life of the city 
at large, represented many widely varying types 
of character and mental outlook.] 

Serol (Maurice) Le Besoin et le Devoir 
religieux. (Bibliotheque Apologetique.) 
216p. Beauchesne, 1908. 

[Seeks to ground religious obligation (i.) on the 
experiential basis of human nature and its 
present condition, and (ii.) on the ethical basis of 
a necessary pursuit of the good.] 

5 Hardy (T. J.) The Gospel of Pain. 

George Bell, 1908. 



8 Jevons (Frank B.) Hellenism and 
Christianity. Harvard Theol. R., April 1 908. 

[A very interesting and suggestive article. 
Hellenism endowed the ancient world with one 
culture, not provincial but a Weltkultur inspired 
with Greek thought and expressed in the Greek 
tongue. In Stoicism we see this new-created 
world becoming conscious of itself. By the Roman 
Empire it was unified into a political whole. The 
essential unity of the human race was brought 
into the full light of consciousness by Paul.] 

Franke (H.) Chris tlicher Monismus. 

323p. Hofmann, 1908. 

10 Bernies (V. L.) Dieu est-il? Etude 

critique sur la valeur de la demonstration. 

R. du Clerge fran9., July 1, 1908. 

[Deals with the objections to rational demon- 
stration of the existence of God arising from 
idealistic a-priorism and positivista-posteriorism.] 

Trevor (John) My Quest for God. 2nd 
ed. 275p. Postal Pub. Co., 1908. 

[This remarkable autobiography, from which 
Professor James quotes in the Varieties of 
Religious Experience, has been for long out of 
print. An interesting preface is added telling of 
the books that have influenced the author since 
the time when the autobiography first appeared.] 

G'Mahony (J.) On some Difficulties 
recently raised against the Argument from 
Design for the Existence of God. 

Irish Th. Q., July 1908. 

[Reply to Dr M'Donald's criticisms of the 
teleological argument in a former number.] 
15 Boutroux (ifanile) Science et Religion 
dans la philosophic contemporaine. (Biblio- 
theque de Philosophic scientifique.) 400p. 
Flammarion, 1908. 

[In this delightfully written book Professor 
Boutroux deals in Part i. with the tendency of 
Naturalism Comte, Spencer, Haeckel; in Part 
ii. with the tendency of Spiritualism Ritschl, 
W. James ; and in a concluding section insists on 
the value of the intellectual element in religion.] 

Francais (J.) L'Eglise et la Science. 
(Bibliotheque de Critique religieuse.) 
177p. Nourry, 1908. 

[Historical essay, exhibiting the constant 
opposition of the clerical party to scientific 
thought and progress. 

Keene (J. B.) The Problem of the 
Genesis of Life in Nature. 

New Church Rev., July 1908. 

[From a Swedenborgian standpoint.] 

Levi (E. ) La Religion de la Science. 

Ccenobium, May 1908. 

[Hitherto unpublished paper by Abbe A. L. 
Constant (1816-1873), who wrote under the above 
pseudonym and was expelled from the R.C. 
Church.] 

Chivalo (G.) L'Ipotesi dell' Evoluzione. 
Ccenobium, May 1908. 

[Setting forth critical objections.] 

Le Cornu (C.) Les idees de M. Emile 
Boutroux sur les rapports de la science et 
de la religion dans la philosophic con- 
temporaine. R. Claret., June, July 1908. 



229 



230 



THE HIBBERT JOURNAL 



B BIBLE 1 Old Test. 5 New Test. 
9 Apocrypha. 

a Masterman (E. W. 0.) The Ancient 
Jewish Synagogues. Bibl. World, Aug. 1908. 
[Describing the ruins of them now found in 
Galilee. The writer hopes there is truth in the 
report that they are to be bought by Jews, other- 
wise they must rapidly disappear. Good photo- 
graphs are given.] 

r Jfuirhead (L. A.) The Terms Life and 
Death in the Old and New Testaments. 
150p. Melrose, 1908. 

[Seep. 224.] 

y M t Pheeters(n r . AT.) The Determination 
of Religious Value the Ultimate Problem 
of the Higher Criticism. 

Princeton Th. R., July 1908. 

Nippold (F.) Wechselbeziehungen 

zwischen jiidischer u. christlicher Theologie. 

Ztsch. f. wiss. Th., Heft 4, 1908. 

[Takes occasion, in noticing two works of 

Jewish Apologetic, by Friedlander and Giidemami, 

to lament the sharp antagonism between Jewish 

and Christian theological writers.] 

v Denk (J.) Burkitt's These: Itala 

Augustini = Vulgata Hieronymi eine text- 

kritische Unmoglichkeit. 

Bibl. Ztschr., Heft 3, 1908. 
la Hontheim (P. J.) Zu den neuesten 
jiidisch-aramaischen Papyri aus Elefantine. 
Bibl. Ztschr., Heft 3, 1908. 
Pope (F. H.) Israel in Egypt after the 
Exodus. Irish Th. Q., July 1908. 

[Giving the information recently brought to 
light by the papyri, of the settlement of refugee 
Jews in Egypt after Nebuchadnezzar's deporta- 
tion.] 

Macler (F.) Hebraica. 

R. de 1'Hist des Rel., Mar. 1908. 
[Summary of the finds in epigraphy, papyrology, 
etc., bearing on Hebrew literature.] 

k Thackeray (H. St J.) Renderings of 
the Infinitive Absolute in the LXX. 

J. Th. St., July 1908. 

p Baentsch (B.) Prophetie und Weissa- 
gung. Ztschr. f. wiss. Theol. , Heft 4, 1908. 
[Their relationship and psychological-historical 
source, as exemplified in the O.T. prophets.] 

Fullerton (K.) The Reformation Prin- 
ciple of Exegesis and the Interpretation of 
Prophecy. Amer. J. Th., July 1908. 

[The Reformation principle was interpretation 
by grammatico-historical sense, and gave way to 
post-Reformation doctrine of dogmatic inspira- 
tion. The process is now being reversed . ] 

q Smith (G. A.) Herr Alois Musil on the 
Land of Moab. Expos. , July 1 908. 

[Gives high praise and authoritative rank to 
this work of topography.] 

3p Diettrich (.) Die theoretische Weisheit 
der Einleitung zuni Buch der Spriiche, ihr 
spezifischer Inhalt und ihre Entstehung. 

Theol. St. u. Krit., Heft 4, 1908. 
[Exegesis, literary and textual criticism of 
Prov. i.-ix., which are regarded as an introduc- 
tion to the book.] 

V Boehmer (J.) Der Berg "Mis'ar" (Ps. 

xlii. 7). Theol. St. u. Krit., Heft 4, 1908. 

[The whole describes the region of the upper 

Jordan, and 1SSQ in = the little hill (i.e. the 
many hillocks or the district) in supplement and 
contrast to great Hermon.] 

4B Margoliouth (D. S.) Recent Exposition 
of Isaiah liii. Expos. , July 1908. 



H Bruston (CJiarles} Etudes sur Daniel et 
PApocalypse. Edition nouvelle. 88p. 

Fischbacher, 1908. 
[A careful piece of research.) 
Q Nicolardot (Firmin) La composition du 
livre d'Habacuc. 99p. Fischbacher, 1908. 
[A new translation and an elaborate critical 
discussion of the date, authenticity, and teaching 
of the book.] 

5k Moulton(J.H.)a.nAMilligan(G.) Lexical 

Notes from the Papyri. Expos. , July 1908. 

y Chapman (J.) Recent Works on the 

New Testament. Dub. R. , July 1908. 

[Gregory, Vogt, Lepin, Milligan, etc.] 
6 Mayor (J. B.) The Helvidian versus the 
Epiphanian Hypothesis. Expos., July 1908. 
[Reaffirming his opinion, against a writer in 
the Church Quarterly for April, that the 
"brethren of the Lord " were sons of Joseph and 
Mary.] 

Scott (E. F.) John the Baptist and his 
Message. Expos., July 1908. 

[Their significance, value, and relationship to 
Christ and his ministry.] 

Wendling(E.) Synoptische Studien. II. 
Der Hauptmann von Kapernaum. 

Ztschr. f. neutest. Wiss., Heft 2, 1908. 
[Concludes that Luke fashioned the story out 
of Matthew, where it is original.] 
r Andersen (A.) Zu der XuTpov-Stelle. 

Ztschr. f. neutest. Wiss., Heft 2, 1908. 

[These passages in the N.T. cannot be oiiginal ; 

they ure later derivations from Is. liii.] 

z Nicolardot (Firmin) Les ( proceds de 

Redaction des trois premiers Evangelistes. 

316p. Fischbacher, 1908. 

[We hope to review this book later.] 
A Ward (Caleb J.) Gospel Development: 
A Study of the Origin and Growth of the 
Four Gospels. 404p. 

Brooklyn, N.Y., Synoptic Pub. Co., 1907. 
[A serviceable popular introduction to the 
analytical comparative study of the Gospels. 
Contains also a " Harmony " in parallel columns, 
in which, by an ingenious use of eight kinds of 
type, the relations of similarity and divergence 
of each passage in any gospel to the corresponding 
passages in all the other gospels are exhibited to 
the eye at a glance.] 

C Mayer (Gottlob) Das Matthausevangelium 
in religiosen Betrachtungen filr das moderne 
Bediirfnis. 407p. Bertelsmann, 1908. 

[A series of short essays upon the gospel taken 
in sections, an attempt being made to bring out 
those implications of each section that bear upon 
modern needs and thoughts.] 
D Koch (H. ) Der erweiterte Markusschluss 
und die kleinasiatischen Presbyter. 

Bibl. Ztsch., Heft 3, 1908. 

[The enlarged ending referred to by Jerome, 

and now found in varied form in the C. L. Freer 

MS. , proceeds from the circle of the Asia-Minor 

presbyters.] 

E Burkitt (F. C.} and Brooke (A. E.) St 
Luke xxii. 15, 16 : What is the General 
Meaning ? J. Th. St. , July 1 908. 

[Regret that the desire was not to be fulfilled.] 
Gaussen (H.) The Lucan and Johannine 
Writings. J. Th. St., July 1908. 

(Adduces parallels in thought and expression to 
prove a bond more intimate than literary ac- 
quaintance between the two writers.] 
SpiUa (F. ) Der Satan als Blitz. 

Ztsch. f. neutest. Wiss., Heft 2, 1908. 

[Lk. x. 18, Christ's answer to the report of the 

seventy. Satan's "falling from heaven" is his 

coming to thwart the work of the mission, in which 

attempt he has failed.] 



RECENT LITERATURE BIBLIOGRAPHY 231 



H Andersen (A.) Zu Joh. 6. 515 ff. 

Ztschr. f. neutest. Wiss., Heft 2, 1908. 
[This other bread (which Christ will give, and 
which is his flesh and blood, and which, being 
eaten, shall give eternal life) refers to the sacra- 
mental institution. The passage therefore is 
post-Ignatian.] 

Hart (J. H. A.) A Plea for the Re- 
cognition of the Fourth Gospel as an 
Historical Authority. Expos., July 1908. 
M Foster (F. ff.) The New Testament 
Miracles : An Investigation of their Func- 
tion. Amer. J. Th. , July 1908. 
[An inquiry as to whether, according to Scrip- 
ture the miracles did in fact "attest the great 
messenger of revelation." The answer is that 
such attestation was not a fact.] 

Owatkin(H. Jf.) The Raising of Lazarus : 
A Note. Cont. R., July 1908. 

[The notoriety of an event does not entitle us 
to say that St Mark was bound to record it, 
unless we can show that he made an object of 
omitting no such events. Burkitt silently assumes 
the contrary.] 

R Trench (0. H.) The Crucifixion and 
Resurrection of Christ by the Light of 
Tradition. 192p. Murray, 1908. 

[An attempt to give a clear and consecutive 
account of the events connected with the Passion 
and Resurrection of our Lord as recorded in the 
canonical gospels.] 

7 Eedfield ( Isabella T. ) A Reasonable Way 
to Study the Bible: The Acts of the 
Apostles, the Epistles. 158p. 

The Author, Pittsfield, 1907. 
[Questions on Paul's Life and Teaching, for 
Sunday-school teaching.] 

Jacquier (E.) Histoire des livres du 

Nouveau Testament. Tome troisieme. 

346p. Lecoffre, 1908. 

[This volume deals with the Acts of the Apostles 

nd the Catholic Epistles. Special attention is 

devoted to the question of the authenticity and 

historical value of Acts. Author of Acts taken 

to be Luke, the physician.] 

B Mackintosh (E.) Corinth and the Tragedy 

of St Paul. Expos., July 1908. 

[Attempts to construct the history of St Paul's 

relations with Corinth during his Ephesian 

ministry.] 

E Rutherford (W. G.) St Paul's Epistles 
to theThessalonians and to the Corinthians. 
With Pref. by Spenser Wilkinson. 92p. 

Macmillan, 1908. 

[A new translation of these Epistles by the 
,te headmaster of Westminster School. In the 
prefatory note an interesting account is given of 
the author, in which the writer has been assisted 
by Prof. W. P. Ker.] 

Jenkins (C.) Origen on 1 Corinthians iii. 
J. Th. St., July 1908. 
[Text and notes.] 

Du Base ( W. Porcher) High Priesthood 
nd Sacrifice : An Exposition of the Epistle 
the Hebrews. (The Bishop Paddock 
tures, 1907-8.) 248p. Longmans, 1908. 
JBurggatter (E. ) Das literarische Problem 
Hebraerbriefs. 

Ztschr. f. neutest. Wiss., Heft 2, 1908, 
[A spoken address, copied out and afterwards 
nt on to some Christian community.] 
Schulte (A.) In welchem Verhaltniss 
iht der Cod. Alex, zum Cod. Vat. im 
;he Tobias ? Bibl. Ztschr. , Heft 3, 1908. 
[The older text is in B, but possibility of inter- 
polation must be granted.] 



IT II 

late 



a Drdseke (J.) Zum neuen Evangelien- 
bruchstiick von Oxyrhynchos. 

Ztschr. f. wiss. Theol., Heft 4, 1908. 
[The text is a fragment of Apolliuarius of 
Laodicea.] 

C CHURCH 14 Social Problems, 20 
Polity, 42 Liturgical, 50 " Sacraments, 
60 Missions. 

1 Dulles (Allen Macy) The True Church : 

A Study (Historical and Scriptural). 319p. 

Revell, 1907. 

[A criticism of the Catholic position of which 
Gore and Moberly have been ardent defenders, 
that the Church has been from the beginning a 
society with a divinely appointed succession of 
those who are in "holy orders."] 

10 Bateman (Charles) Statistics of the 
Churches. Albany R., June 1908. 

20 Burnley (Bishop of) The Present State 
of Church Reform. 

19th Cent., July and Aug. 1908. 

21 Hill (David Spence) The Education and 
Problems of the Protestant Ministry. 94p. 

Clark University Press, 1908. 

Dykes (J. Oswald) The Christian Minister 
and his Duties. 371p. Clark, 1908. 

[Writes from the experience of a ministry of 
nearly fifty years. Author devotes considerable 
space to the conduct of public worship "a duty 
which in every non-liturgical service lays such a 
heavy demand on the officiating minister."] 
26 Monks (Gilbert) Pastor in Ecclesia : A 
Practical Study in the Art of Money- 
raising. 323p. Elliot Stock, 1908. 

[Preface by Dr Kitchin, Dean of Durham, who 
recommends the book as showing how the 
minister can get at the heart of his flock by 
calling on them to take part with him in good 
works.] 

53 Lilly (W. S.) The Coming Eucharistic 
Congress. Dub. R., July 1908. 

Bishop (W. C.) The Primitive Form of 
Consecration of the Holy Eucharist. 

Church Q.R., July 1908. 

[It was of the same general character as that 
now found in the Eastern liturgies institution, 
anamnesis, invocation.] 

Boudinhon (A.) Les origines de 1'Eleva- 
tion. 

R. du Clerge" fran9., June 1, July 1, 1908. 

[Translation of Father Thurston's articles in 
the Tablet, interesting for its discussion of the 
question of the consecration of the elements.] 
56 M'Kenna(P.) The Judicial Character of 
the Sacrament of Penance. 

Irish Th. Q., July 1908. 

[Attempts to establish such a character for the 
sacrament. ] 

60 Auzuech (C.) Le mouvement religieux 
dans 1'Inde. 

R. du Clerge frangais, June 1, 1908. 

Brown (J.) The Colonial Missions of 
Congregationalism : The Story of Seventy 
Years. 124p. Congregational Union, 1908. 

D DOCTRINE 10 " God, 22 Christ, 60" 

Eschatology, 70 Faith, 90 " Apologetics. 
D Anon. The Theology of the Keswick 
Convention. Church Q. R., July 1908. 

Far el (P.) Le fideisme est-il le port 1 

Rev. chret, Aug. 1908. 

[Applies to fideism what Sabatier applied to 

rationalism "in separating itself from Christ, 

Christian religion ceases to be positive, and tends 

to become an abstract and dead thing."] 



232 



THE HIBBERT JOURNAL 



L "Persona." A New Gospel. 88p. 

Brentano, 1908. 

[The Spirit of Christ on Religious Subjects and 
on Social Topics.] 
L. B. What is Truth ? 131p. 

Elliot Stock, 1908. 

[A series of meditations, consisting chiefly of 
quotations.] 

2 Herbermann (C. G.) and others, eds. The 
Catholic Encyclopaedia. An International 
Work of Reference on the Constitution, 
Doctrine, Discipline and History of the 
Catholic Church. Vol. iii. Brow-Clancy. 
812p. Caxton Publishing Co., 1908. 

[Review later.] 
Lcbreton (J. ) Chronique the"ologique. 

R. prat. d'Apologet, June 15, 1908. 
[Devoted to Modernism, as exemplified in Loisy 
and Tyrrell.) 
Lcbreton (J. ) Chronique the"ologique. 

R. prat d'Apologet., July 15, 1908. 
[A summary of recent literature directed 
against Modernism.] 

Baylac (J.) Le Modernisme et ses ori- 
gines philosophiques. 

R. prat d'Apologet, July 1, 1908. 
Jounet (Albert) Le Modernisme et 
1'Infaillibilite. 40p. Nourry, 1908. 

[Attempts to find a via media,.] 
Author^ of " The Policy of the Pope." 
The Abbe Loisy and Modernism. 

Cont R., Aug. 1908. 

[What Loisy has done is to bring home to the 
mind of every Catholic, not that the title-deeds 
of his Church are defective or doubtful, but that 
they have mouldered away, and if brought into 
contact with the upper air will crumble and 
vanish as dust.] 

Tyrrell (George) Medievalism : A Reply 
to Cardinal Mercier. 210p. 

Longmans, 1908. 
[Review will follow.] 
17 Soter. Fede e Miracolo. 

Ccenobium, May 1908. 
[Miracle in the sense of divine intervention is 
absurd ; but ' ' the human brain is an inexhaust- 
ible generator of cosmic force, "and is to be the 
source of new power.) 
22 Crespi(A.) II Cristo di Alfredo Loisy. 

Ccenobium, May 1908. 

27 Le Breton (Paul) La Resurrection du 
Christ. (Bibliotheque de Critique religieuse.) 
lOOp. Nourry, 1908. 

[A critical examination of the evidence. Con- 
cludes that the resurrection of Christ is a fact 
which has never been historically proved, and 
never can be.] 

33 Harbin (Robert Maxwell) Health and 
Happiness ; or, An Analogical Study of Dis- 
ease and Sin. 184p. 

Griffith & Rowland Press, 1908. 
47 Coe (Q. A.) What does Modern Psych- 
ology permit us to believe in respect to 
Regeneration 1 Amer. J. Th., July 1908. 
65 Tolstoi (L. ) Lettre sur la vie future. 

R. du Christianisme social, July 1908. 
80 Barnes ( W. Emery') The Lambeth Con- 
ference and the ' ' Athanasian Creed." 

19th Cent, July 1908. 

90 Egerton (Hakluyt) Liberal Theology and 
the Ground of Faith : Essays towards a 
Conservative Re-statement of Apologetic. 
248p. Pitman, 1908. 

[Two essays. The first attempts to describe 
and estimate the ideas which characterise Liberal 
Theology, and to criticise the conceptions of 



uniformity which tend to predispose the modern 
mind against a miraculous religion. The second 
finds the ground of faith in the living Christian 
society and our experience of that society.) 

Lacger (L. de) De la modernit6 des 
apologies chretiennes au 2 e siecle. 

R. prat d'Apologet, June 1, 1908. 

E ETHICS. 1-9 Practical Theology, 
Christian Ethics, Transition to General 
Ethics, 10 Theories, 20 Applied Ethics, 
Sociology, 23 Economics, 27 Education. 

10 Mead (George H.) The Philosophical 
Basis of Ethics. Phil. R., Apr. 1908. 

[Proceeds on the conception of an evolution 
within which the environment that which our 
science has presented as a fixed datum in its 
physical nature has been evolved, as well as the 
form which has adapted itself to that environ- 
ment.] 

M'Taggart (J. Ellis) The Individualism 
of Value. Inter. J. Eth., July 1908. 

[Goodness and badness are individualistic in a 
way in which the existent reality which is good 
or bad need not be individualistic. If all existent 
reality forms a single unity, in which the unity 
is as real as the differentiations even in that 
case the goodness or badness to be found in that 
whole would not be a unity. It would be a multi- 
plicity of separate values. The universe as a 
whole is neither good nor bad.] 

Lloyd (Alfred H.) The Relation of 
Righteousness to Brute Facts. 

Inter. J. Eth., July 1908. 

[The relation of righteousness to the brute 
facts of life should be one of faith ; of the faith 
that realises itself in broad sympathy, in positive 
activity, and in deep humour.) 

FouUtee (A.) La volonte' de Conscience 
comme Base Philosophique de la Morale. 

Rev. Phil., Aug. 1908. 

[Author used the term Volontt de conscience in 
his recent work on the Morale des idtfs-forcct as 
the formula of the immanent basis of his 
theoretical and practical philosophy. He here 
replies to various objections and criticisms.) 

Millioud (M. ) La formation de 1'Ideal. 
Rev. Phil., Aug. 1908. 

Sharp (F. Chapman) A Study of the 
Influence of Custom on the Moral Judgment. 
(Bulletin of the University of Wisconsin, 
No. 236.) 144p. Madison, 1908. 

Wright (H. W.) Evolution and the Self- 
Realisation Theory. 

Inter. J. Eth., April 1908. 

[The idea of evolution incorporated in the self- 
realisation theory furnishes just the aid needed 
to prevent its degenerating into a mere prudential 
calculus.] 

Laupts (Dr) Responsabilite ou R- 
activite ? Rev. Phil., June 1908. 

[Contends that the principle of social reaction, 
analogous to that of organic reaction, should 
replace the metaphysical notion of free-will in 
the legal treatment of crime.] 

Libby (Walter) Two Fictitious Ethical 
Types. Inter. J. Eth., July 1908. 

[Compares with the vehemently anti Christian 
ethical ideal of Nietzsche the moral ideal of " The 
Two Noble Kinsmen."] 

Pigou (A. C.) The Ethics of Nietzsche. 
Inter. J. Eth., April 1908. 

[Strength and energy is for Nietzsche theprimary 
quality of super-man. It is an essential ingredient 
in all real goodness. But it is not the only in- 
gredient. It is also necessary that there be no 
ouesidedness.) 



RECENT LITERATURE BIBLIOGRAPHY 233 



20 Oppenheimer (Franz) Moderns Geschichts- 
philosophie. 
Vierteljahrssch. f. w. Phil., xxxii. 2, 1908. 

[Discusses Lamprecht, Breysig, and Brooks- 
Adams.] 

Muirhead (J. H.) The Service of the State. 
Four Lectures on the Political Teaching of 
T. H. Green. 134p. Murray, 1908. 

{Aim of these lectures is to show more fully 
what the union of the theoretical and practical 
reason meant to Green himself, and by what 
potency in his ideas they have entered into the 
spirit of our own time, directing forces in thought 
and action.] 

Hobhouse(L. T.) The Law of the Three 
Stages. Sociological R., July 1908. 

[Finds that Comte's law expresses certain 
aspects of the movement of thought. Author 
suggests, however, considerable modifications. 
The first stage is not purely theological, and the 
second can hardly retain the name metaphysical.] 

Tupper (Sir C. L. ) Sociology and Com- 
parative Politics. Sociological R., Jul. 1908. 

[The scientific examination of political evolu- 
tion on the basis of ascertained facts ought to be 
one of the objects of Sociology.] 

Dickinson (G. Lowes) Machiavellianism. 
Albany R., Aug. 1908. 

[Every idealist, before he can get to work, must 
meet and wrestle with Machiavelli on the way. 
When he has broken the staff of that god, he 
may be fit to pass through the fire.] 

Herbert (Auberon) The Voluntaryist 
Creed (Herbert Spencer Lecture, 1906), and 
A Plea for Voluntaryism. 107p. 

Frowde, 1908. 

Kidd (Benjamin) Individualism and 
After. (Herbert Spencer Lecture, 1908.) 
36p. Clarendon Press, 1908. 

[Endeavours to exhibit the leading feature of 
our times as a movement of the world under 
many forms towards a more organic conception 
of society.] 

Stanton (Rossingtori) An Essay on the 
Distribution of Livelihood. 125p. 

Farwell, 1908. 

[This essay purports to set forward new prin- 
ciples of production and distribution, and to 
mathematically adjust population to the produc- 
tive organism.] 

Bureau (M.) La crise morale dans les 
societes contemporaines. 
Bull, de la Soc. fran$. de Phil., April 1908. 

M'Conncll (R. M.) The Ethics of State 
Interference in the Domestic Relations. 

Inter. J. Eth., April 1908. 

Webb (Sidney) The Necessary Basis of 
Society. Cont. R., June 1908. 

[The necessary basis of society is the formula- 
tion and rigid enforcement in all spheres of 
social activity of a National Minimum below 
which the individual, whether he likes it or not, 
cannot, in the interests of the well-being of the 
whole, ever be allowed to fall. The policy of 
the National Minimum translates itself into four 
main branches (a) of wages, (6) of leisure, (c) of 
sanitation, (d) of education.] 

Macdonald (J, Ramsiy) Socialism and 
Politics. Fort. R., June 1908. 

Hunter (R.) Socialists at Work. 374p. 
Macmillan, 1908. 

[An American work closely studying the facts of 
the Socialistic movement, with special treatment 
of Germany.Italy, France, England, and Belgium.] 

Jenks (Edward) Mr Mallock on Socialism. 
Albany R., June 1908. 

Crozier (J. Seattle) A Challenge to 
Socialism. IV. A Dialogue with Marx. 

Fort. R., July 1908. 



Box (E. Belfort) Socialism, Real and So- 
called. Fort. R., Aug. 1908. 

Egerton (H. ) Socialism and an Alterna- 
tive. Church Q. R., July 1908. 

[" Ethical Individualism " is the alternative.] 

Wells (H. Gf. ) My Socialism. 

Cont. R., Aug. 1908. 

[Defends the Samurai idea as sketched in the 
Modern Utopia.] 

Marriott (J. A. R.) The "Right to 
Work. " 1 9th Cent. , June 1 908. 

Ooddard (J. ) The Church and the Social 
Question. New Church Rev., July 1908. 

[Chiefly an exposition of two American books 
on the subject Shaler Matthews and Rauschen- 
busch.] 

Grossman (Mrs) Poverty in London and 
in New Zealand : A Study in Contrasts. 

19th Cent, July 1908. 

Hutchinson (J. G.) A Workman's View 
of the Remedy for Unemployment. 

19th Cent., Aug. 1908. 

Barry ( W. ) Forecasts of To-morrow. 

Quar. R., July 1908. 

[Discussion of works by Professor Petrie, Mr 
H. G. Wells, and W. Hentschel. All three hold 
civilisation to be in danger, and they fix on the 
same enemy the " wholesale " leveller who calls 
himself a democrat. It is urged that the 
Christian State, which would lay on property 
duties commensurate with opulence, and on 
anarchic freedom the yoke of the Gospel, is a 
way of salvation.] 

Askwith (G. R.) Sweated Industries. 

FortR., Aug. 1908. 

Crackanthorpe (Montague) Eugenics as a 
Social Force. 19th Cent. , June 1908. 

Jones (Russell Lowell) International 
Arbitration as a Substitute for War between 
Nations. 269p. Simpkin, Marshall, 1908. 

[Rector's Prize Essay at St Andrews, 1907. 
Professor Bosanquet writes a preface with a high 
commendation of the author's work.] 

Unwin (George) A Note on English 
Character. Inter. J. Eth., July 1908. 

Anon. Catholic Social Work in Germany. 
II. The " Autumn Manoeuvres." 

Dub. R., July 1908. 

Iqbal (S. M. ) Political Thought in Islam. 
Sociological R., July 1908. 

Carlton (Frank T. ) Is America morally 
decadent? Inter. J. Eth., July 1908. 

[It is not proven that the American people are 
entering upon a period of moral decadence.] 

Macnicol (N. ) The Future of India. 

Cont. R., July 1908. 

21 Heath (Carl) The Treatment of Homi- 
cidal Criminals. Inter. J. Eth., July 1908. 
23 Gide (C.) Le pouvoir de 1'argent. 

R. du Christianisme social, May 15, 1908. 

27 Durr (E. ) Einfuhrung in die Padagogik. 

288p. Quelle & Meyer, 1908. 

Johnston (Sir H. H.) The Empire and 
Anthropology. 19th Cent., July 1908. 

Gibon (F.) Les instituteurs sans foi, 
sans famille et sans patrie. 

R. prat. d'Apologet, Aug. 1, 1908. 

[Charging the secular schools of France with 
deliberate? and aggressive anti-religious, anti- 
moral, and anti-social teaching. Remarkable 
cases are cited and names of teachers given.] 

Lathbury (D. C. ) Equality and Element- 
ary Schools. 19th Cent., June 1908. 

A Catholic Outcast. Free Trade in 
Education. Fort. R., June 1908. 



234 



THE HIBBERT JOURNAL 



Grove (Lady Agnes') The Meaning of the 
International Moral Education Congress. 

Fort R., July 1908. 

Mackenzie (J. S. ) The Problem of Moral 
Instruction. Inter. J. Eth., Apr. 1908. 

[Deals with the questions : (a) whether the 
principles of morality are sufficiently definite to 
admit of being taught to all children in a gener- 
ally acceptable form ; (6) admitting that they can 
be so taught, whether a sufficient number of 
suitable teachers can be provided.] 

Ramsay (Sir W. M.) The Carnegie 
Trust and the Scottish Universities. 

Cont. R., June 1908. 

Platt (H. R P.) Oxford in the Sixties. 
Cont. R., June 1908. 

28 Karnel (Aly Bey Fahmy) Discours 
Patriotique : Reponse au Rapport de Sir 
E. Gorst en 1907., 43t>. 

"L'Etendard Egyptien," 1908. 
Richet (Ch.) La Guerre et la Paix au 
point de vue philosophique. 

Rev. Phil, Aug. 1908. 

[The effort of philosophers ought to be directed 

to creating in the public mind the conviction that 

the enemy of man is not man, but ignorance of 

the forces of nature.] 

Cook (Waldo L.) Wars and Labour 
Wars. Inter. J. Eth., April 1908. 

Roberts (W. J.] The Racial Interpreta- 
tion of History and Politics. 

Inter. J. Eth., July 1908. 

29 Russell (Hon. Bertrand) Liberalism and 
Women's Suffrage. Cont. R., July 1908. 

Billington-Qreig (Teresa) The Rebellion 
of Woman. Cont. R., July 1908. 

Billington- Greig ( T. ) The-Sex-Disability 
and Adult Suffrage. Fort. R., Aug. 1908. 

Anon. Women and the Franchise. 

Edin. R., July 1908. 

[The " movement " has to be defeated ; and it 
will greatly tend to that defeat if the majority 
of wives and mothers can succeed In making 
their wishes known and their influence felt.] 

Harrison (Ethel B.) The Freedom of 
Women. 55p. Watts, 1908. 

[An argument against the extension of the 
suffrage to women, by Mrs Frederic Harrison.] 

Spender (Harold) The Revolt of Woman. 

Albany R., Aug. 1908. 

[A strain of inconsistency runs through the 

whole of our English treatment of women, both 

social and economic.] 

Ward (Mrs Humphry) The Women's 
Anti-Suffrage Movement. 

19th Cent., Aug. 1908. 

Lovat (Lady) Women and the Suffrage. 

19th Cent., July 1908. 

50 A Spectator. The Stage and the Puritan. 
Fort R., June 1908. 

98 Snowden (Philip) Socialism and the 

Drink Question. (The Socialist Lib. ) 205p. 

Indep. Lab. Party, 1908. 

[In favour of the municipalisation of the Drink 

Traffic.] 



F PASTORALIA. 2 Sermons. 

Cunningham ( W. ) The Cure of Souls. 
236p. Clay, 1908. 

[Lectures on Pastoral Theology largely histori- 
caldelivered in the Divinity School, Cambridge, 
Lent, 1908, and other addresses on missionary 
work, etc.] 



Trnherne ( Thomas) Centuries of Medita- 
tions. Now first printed from the Author's 
Manuscript. Edited by Bertram Dobell. 
372p. Dobell, 1908. 

[This work seems to have been intended as a 
manual of devotion for members of the Church of 
England.] 

2 Collyer (Robert) Where the Light 
Dwelleth. Sermons. With a Memoir by 
C. Hargrove. 353p. P. Green, 1908. 

Fillingham (R. C.) Sermons by a Sus- 
pended Vicar. 106p. Griffiths, 1908. 

["A modest attempt to popularise Modern- 
ism."] 

Campbell (R. J.) Thursday Mornings at 
the City Temple. 319p. Unwin, 1908. 

Ingram (A. F. Winnington) The Love 
of the Trinity. 328p. Gardner, 1908. 

[Addresses and answers to questions given at 
the Central London Mission.] 

Butcher (Dean) The Sound of a Voice 
that is Still : A Selection of Sermons 
preached in Cairo. Introduction by Mrs 
Butcher. 216p. Dent, 1908. 

Bannister (A. T.) Christianity and 
Social Problems. 60p. 

Hereford : Jakeman & Carver, 1908. 

[Six Lenten Sermon-Lectures on Christianity 
in its Practical Application, Christianity and 
Poverty, Christianity and Commerce, Christianity 
and Labour, Christianity and the Child, Applied 
Christianity at Work. In an; Introduction, the 
Bishop of Hereford warmly commends the book, 
which deserves to be widely read.] 



G BIOGRAPHY. 2 English. 

1 Gerard (J. ) Giordano Bruno. 

The Month, June 1908. 
[Intended to correct an uudiscriminating 
admiration.] 

ffolman (H.) Pestalozzi : An Account 
of his Life and Work. 322p. 

Longmans, 1908. 
Witt-Guizot (F. de) Montalembert. 

R. chret., June, July, 1908. 

Dartigue (H.) Auguste Sabatier a 

Strasbourg. R. chret., June, July, 1908. 

Dartigue (H.) Auguste Sabatier a 

Strasbourg (1869-73). 

R. chret., Aug. 1908. 

2 Minchin (Harry Christopher) Glimpses 
of Dr Thomas Fuller. (Born in June, 1608. ) 

Fort. R., July 1908. 

Mackie (Alexander), ed. James Beattie, 
"The Minstrel." Some Unpublished 
Letters. 

Aberdeen : " Daily Journal " Office, 1908. 

C. R. L. F. Mr Gladstone at Oxford, 
1890. 103p. Smith, Elder, 1908. 

Rait (Robert S. ) David Masson. 

Fort R., Aug. 1908. 

Raikes (Elizabeth) Dorothea Beale of 
Cheltenham. 432p. Constable, 1908. 



H HISTORY, x Persecutions C Chris- 
tian M Mediaeval R Modern 2 English. 

C Lawlor (H. J.) The Heresy of the 

Phrygians. J. Th. St., July 1908. 

(Their M on tan ism was of a different type (much 

less ascetic) from that of the West which was in 

fact Tertullian ism.] 



RECENT LITERATURE BIBLIOGRAPHY 235 



Bethune- Baker (J. F.) The Date of the 
Death of Nestorius : Schenute, Zacharias, 
Evagrius. J. Th. St., July 1908. 

Cumont (F.) Le tombeau de S. Dasius 
de Durostorum. 

Anal. Boll., fasc. iii. and iv., torn, xxvii. 

[A tomb recently discovered at Ancona as the 
place where the translated remains of the saint 
rest] 

Delehaye (H.) Une version nouvelle de 
la Passion de S. Georges. 

Anal. Boll., fasc. iii. and iv., torn, xxvii. 

[Contained in MS. 3789 of the Bib. Nat. of Paris. 
Text is given. The author concludes that it is a 
narrative (legendary) of the passion of St Gregory 
of Spoletum.] 

Delehaye (H. ) Les femmes stylites. 

Anal. Boll., fasc. iii. and iv., torn, xxvii. 

[From the Life of " S. Lazare le Galesiote," the 
author discovers that there were communities of 
Stylite women.] 

Goregaud (L.) Some Liturgical and 
Ascetic Traditions of the Celtic Church. 

J. Th. St., July 1908. 

[I., on Genuflexion.] 

Moretus (H.) De magno legendario 
Bodecensi. 

Anal. Boll., fasc. iii. and iv. , torn, xxvii. 

[Index and catalogue of MSS.] 

Peelers (P.) ,Le sanctuaire de la lapida- 

n de S. Etienne. A propos d'une 

ntroverse. 

Anal. Boll., fasc. iii. and iv., torn, xxvii. 

Referring to the controversy in the Revue de 

rient as to an alleged identification.] 

Poncelet (A.} Une lettre de S. Jean, 
veque de Cambrai, a Hincmar de Laon. 

Anal. Boll., fasc. iii. and iv., torn, xxvii. 

[Examined and found not authentic.] 

MacCaffrey (J.) The Origin and De- 

"opment of Cathedral and Collegiate 
pters in the Irish Church. 

Irish Th. Q., July 1908. 

the Church of St Patrick's period.] 
Gorres (F.) Papst Gregor I. der Grosse 
-604) und das Judentum. 

Ztschr. f. wiss. Theol., Heft 4, 1908. 
Robinson (Dean J. A.) Simon Langham, 
.bbot of Westminster. 

Church Q.R., July 1908. 
Souter (A.) Contributions to the Criti- 
im of Zmaragdus's Expositio Libri 
Comitis. J. Th. St., July 1908. 

R Berbig (A.) Fiinfundzwanzig Briefe 
des Kurfiirsten Johann Friedrich, des 
Grossmiitigen, aus der Zeit von 1545 bis 
1547. Ztschr. f. wiss. Theol., Heft 4, 1908. 
Kawerau (G.} Fiinfundzwanzig Jahre 
Lutherforschung, 1883-1908. 

Theol. St. u. Krit, Heft 4, 1908. 
[Second and concluding article.] 
S Harrison (Mrs Frederic] The Bastille. 

19th Cent., Aug. 1908. 
Maitland (F. W.) A Constitutional 
istory of England. 573p. Clay, 1908. 
[Professor Maitland delivered these lectures in 
'-1888, as Reader in .English Law at Cambridge. 
iy are edited by Mr H. A. L. Fisher.] 
Benn (A. W.) Modern England: A 
ord of Opinion and Action from the 
time of the French Revolution to the 
present day. 535p. Watts, 1908. 

[Emphasises the influence on thought and 
politics of rationalistic opinion.] 




Green (Alice Stopford) The Making of 

Ireland and its Undoing, 1200-1600. 527p. 

Macmillan, 1908. 

Swinny (S. H.) A Sociological View of 
the History of Ireland. 

Sociological R., July 1908. 

Cooper (Charles Henry) Annals of Cam- 
bridge. Vol. v., 1850-6. With Additions 
and Corrections to vols. i.-iv. and Index 
(113p.). 656p. Clay, 1908. 

1 INDIVIDUAL CHURCHES AND 

WRITERS. C Fathers 2 E.G. 

Church 3 Anglican. 

Connolly (R. H.) On Aphraates Hoin. 
1, 19. ' J. Th. St., July 1908. 

C Klein (G.) Die Gebete in der Didache. 
Ztschr. f. neutest. Wiss., Heft 2, 1908. 

[The Giving-of -Thanks or Bucharistic prayer of 
the Didache is nothing else than an equivalent of 
Jewish rites ; ix. 2 answers to the Kiddush 
ushering in the sabbath or feast day ; ix. 3 and 4, 
to the Blessing of the Bread ; x. 2-5, to the three 
Blessings which compose the " Table-Prayer."] 

Chapman (Dom) On the Date of the 
Clementines, II. 

Ztschr. f. neutest. Wiss., Heft 2, 1908. 

2 Lupton (J. M. ), ed. Q. Septimi Florentis 
Tertulliani de Baptismo. With Intro, and 
Notes. (Cambridge Patristic Texts.) 119p. 

Clay, 1908. 

Souter (Alexander), ed. Pseudo-Augus- 
tini Questiones Veteris et Novi Testamenti 
cxxvii. Accedit Appendix continens alter- 
ius editionis quaestiones selectas. 614p. 

Tempsky, 1908. 

[Vol. L. of the Corpus Scriptorum Ecclesiasti- 
corum Latinorum.] 

Petschenig (M.), ed. Sancti Aureli 
Augustini Scripta contra Donatistas Pars 1 : 
Psalmus contra Partem Donati, contra 
Epistulam Parmeniani Libri Tres, De 
Baptismo Libri Septem. 41 Op. 

Tempsky, 1908. 

[Vol. LI. of Corpus Scriptorum Ecclesiasticorum 
Latinorum. } 

Muzzey (D. S.) Were the Spiritual 
Franciscans Montanist Heretics ? 

Amer. J. Th., July 1908. 

[No, in spite of some similarities.] 

Pisani (P.) La constitution civile du 
Clerge. R. du Clerge fraii9., June 1, 1908. 

[An account of the anti-Ultramontane law of 
1790 and its application.] 

Hitchcock (G. S. ) The Last Things. 

Irish Th. Q., July 1908. 

[Depicts phases of thought leading a man, 
represented as a Unitarian, to become a 
Catholic.] 

Keating (J. ) A Study in Bigotry. 

The Month, July 1908. 

[As exhibited, according to the writer, in the 
references to Catholicism in R. F. Horton's What 
I Believe.} 

Van Ortroy (F. ) Manrese et les origines 
de la Compagnie de J6sus. 

Anal. Boll., fasc. iii. and iv., torn, xxvii. 

[Seeks to correct some current views.] 

Anon. Fenelon at Cambrai. 

Edin. R. , July 1908. 

Anon. Port Royal. Edin. R., July 1908. 

[Port Royal was an attempt unhappily an 
unsuccessful attempt to arrest the process of 
interior decay in religious and national life ; to 
make out of the France of the old regime, feudal, 



236 



THE H1BBERT JOURNAL 



Catholic and monarchical, " une nation instruite, 
honnete, ayantsouci duvrai."] 

Sarolea (Charles) Cardinal Newman and 
his Influence on Religious Life and Thought. 
(The World's Epoch-Makers.) 174p. 

Clark, 1908. 

[Author is more concerned in this essay with 
the theologian and the thinker than with the man 
and the artist. He tries to clear up some aspects 
of the problem and to get at the fundamental 
ideas and main conclusions of Newman.] 

Rule (Jtf.) The Leonian Sacramentary : 
An Analytical Study. J. Th. St. , July 1908. 

[To be continued. The writer seeks to prove 
that it was first composed under Leo the Great, 
an amplified redaction published under Hilarus, 
and a third and much augmented one under 
Simplicius.] 

Martindalc (G. C.) Catholics and Ath- 
leticism in Italy. The Month, July 1908. 

Smith (S. F.) Indulgences. 

The Month, June and July 1908. 

[Their rationale. A paper read before a Church 
guild.] 

3 Anon. The Lambeth Conference and the 
Union of the Churches. 

Church Q.R., July 1908. 

[Discussion in a liberal spirit of possibilities of 
reunion on the basis of Lambeth Quadrilateral. 
To further the proposed union with the Presby- 
terians in Australia, it is suggested that ministers 
of both communions should receive, not a new 
ordination, but a fresh commission with laying 
on of hands.] 

Cerisier (J. E.) Le Congres universel de 
PEglise anglicane. Rev. chre"t., Aug. 1908. 

Burns (Cecil Delisle) The Pan- Anglican 
Congress. Albany R., July 1908. 

[The papers of the Congress mark a stage in the 
growth of the religious consciousness. Whatever 
the religion of the future may be, it will cer- 
tainly contain more intellectual elements than 
any form of religion does now.] 

Welldon (Bishop) An " Imperial Con- 
ference " of the Church and its Significance. 
19th Cent, June 1908. 

Montgomery (Bishop H. H.) The Pan- 
Anglican Congress. Cont. R., Aug. 1908. 

Hodges ( George) The American Episcopal 
Church. Cont. R., July 1908. 

4 Albrecht (0.) Neue Katechismusstudien. 

Theol. St. u. Krit., Heft 4, 1908. 

[Dealing with "What did Luther understand 
by Catechism?" and "MSS. Material for the so- 
called Greater Catechism of Luther."] 

Mulct (R.) Wilhelm Farel der Refor- 
mator der franzbsischen Schweiz : Ein lebens- 
bild. Theol. St. u. Krit., Heft 4, 1908. 

[Concluding article.] 

Vaucher (E.) La reforme des Facult^s 
de theologie. Rev. chre"t., June 1908. 

[Criticism of the method and of the proposed 
reforms in the training of French Protestant 
pastors.] 

5 WarfieU (B. B.) The Westminster 
Assembly and its Work. 

Princeton Th. R., July 1908. 

[I.e. in framing Directory, Confession, and 
Catechisms. ] 

Beveridge (W.) Makers of the Scottish 
Church. (Handbooks for Bible Classes and 
Private Students. ) 212p. Clark, 1908. 

[A useful little work tracing the liistory of the 
Scottish Church from Columba down to the 
present time.] 

7 Evans (R. C. ) Calvinism : A Treatise on 
the Confession of Faith of the Calvinistic 
Methodists in Wales. 79p. Williams, 1908. 



L LITERATURE. 2 English 3 German 
5 Italian 9 Classical. 

2 Collins (Churton) The Literary Indebted- 
ness of England to France. 

Fort. R., Aug. 1908. 

Guyot ( Yves) The Influence of English 
Thought on the French Mind. 

FortR., July 1908. 

Ingram (J. H.) Verse ascribed to 
Shakespeare. Albany R., June 1908. 

Sullivan (Sir Edward) Shakespeare and 
the Waterways of North Italy. 

19th Cent., Aug. 1908. 
Hadow (W. H.) lago. 

Albany R., July 1908. 
[That lago is driven at last into the extreme of 
wickedness is admitted without reserve ; but the 
contention of the writer is that Shakespeare has 
made him, not a mere personification of evil, but 
a possible human being with human qualities.] 

Paul (Herbert) The Permanence of 
Wordsworth. 19th Cent. , June 1908. 

Eagleston (A. J.) Wordsworth, Cole- 
ridge, and the Spy. 1 9th Cent. , Aug. 1908. 
Stawell (F. Melian) The Poems of Mary 
Coleridge. Albany R., Aug. 1908. 

Thompson (the late Francis) Shelley. 

Dub. R., July 1908. 
[An eulogistic estimate.] 
Salt (Henry S.) Thoreau in Twenty 
Volumes. Fort. R., June 1908. 

Goddard (Harold Clarke) Studies in 
New England Transcendentalism. 227p. 

Columbia University Press, 1908. 
V Ward (Wilfred) Three Notable Editors : 
Delane, Hutton, Knowles. 

Dub. R., July 1908. 

W Morley (John) Miscellanies. Fourth 
series. 331p. Macmillan, 1908. 

[Essays on Machiavelli, Guicciardini, A New 
Calendar of Great Men, J. S. Mill, Lecky on 
Democracy, A Historical Romance, Democracy 
and Reaction. All have appeared before in the 
Times and Nineteenth Century.] 

Hamon (Augustin) Un riouveau Moliere : 
A French View of Bernard Shaw. 

19th Cent., July 1908. 

Salter ( W. Mackintire) Mr Bernard Shaw 
as a Social Critic. Inter. J. Eth. , July 1908. 

[Art has an end beyond itself ; and the object 
of Shaw's art in particular is to make men think, 
to make them uncomfortable, to convict them of 
sin.] 

Guidi(A.F.) Rudyard Kipling. Intimo. 
Coenobium, May 1908. 

[With more personal than literary detail.] 

3 Engel(B.C.) Schiller als Denker. 188p. 

Weidmann, 1908. 

Dowden (Edward) Goethe's West- 
Eastern Divan. Cont. R. , July 1908. 

[A delightful article upon Goethe's last im- 
portant body of lyrical poetry, the " West-Eastern 
Divan," which even in Germany is, as a whole, 
much less known than it deserves to be.] 

4 Qribblc (Francis) Rousseau in Venice. 

Fort. R., Aug. 1908. 
Wyndham (Francis M.) M. Anatole 
France on Joan of Arc. 

Dub. R., July 1908. 

5 Verrall(A. W.) Dante on the Baptism 
ofStatius. Albany R., Aug. 1908. 

Austin (Alfred) Dante's Poetic Concep- 
tion of Woman. Fort. R., June 1908. 



RECENT LITERATURE BIBLIOGRAPHY 237 



8 Rose (Henry) Ibsen as a Religious 
Teacher. Cont. R., June 1908. 

[A very appreciative treatment of " Peer 
Jynt" and "Brand" the "two greatest of the 
'ramatic poems of Ibsen."] 
Corssen (P.) ttber Begriff und Wesen 
Hellenismus. 

Ztschr. f. neutest. Wiss., Heft 2, 1908. 
Verrall(A. W.) The First Homer. 

Quar. R., July 1908. 

[Criticises Andrew Lang's Homer and His Age.] 
Ashby (Thomas) The Rediscovery of 
;ome. Quar. R., July 1908. 

[An interesting paper on recent excavations by 
he Director of the British School at Borne.] 



RELIGIONS. MYTHOLOGY. 4 

Unduism. 7 Judaism. 9 Demonology. 
Occultism. 

Best (E.) Maori Personifications of 

ature. Amer. Antiquarian, May 1908. 

Amtlineau (E.) La religion egyptienne 

apres M. Ad. Erman. 

R. de 1'Hist. des Rel., Mar. 1908. 

Radau (Hugo) Bel, the Christ of 
Ancient Times. 55p. Kegan Paul, 1908. 

[The "Light that lightens the world" said of 
himself, " Before Abraham was I was." He was 
and existed and was worshipped as " Son of the 
God of Heaven and Earth " under various names 
as early as 7000 B.C., when the monotheistic trini- 
tarian religion of Babylonia was systematised.] 

4 Macdonald(W. A.) The Oldest Story : 
Doings of our Ancestors in India 10,000 
years ago. Trans, from pre-Vedic Sanskrit. 
I70p. Questall Press, 1908. 

Segerstedt (T.) Les Asuras dans la 
religion vedique ( first article). 

R. de 1'Hist. des Rel., Mar. 1908. 

5 Anesaki (M.) II Buddhismo e i suoi 
critici. Ccenobium, May 1908. 

[An answer to what the author considers one- 
sided criticism.] 

Copleston (R. S.) Buddhism Primitive 
and Present in Magadha and in Ceylon. 
~ ed. 301p. Longmans, 1908. 

[The book has been entirely re-written. Notice 
has been taken of such recent discoveries as have 
become known to the author. Much important 
matter added in the form of notes.] 

Davids (T. D. Rhys) Early Buddhism. 
(Religions, Ancient and Modern. ) 92p. 

Constable, 1908. 

[An extremely valuable little book, giving a 
most interesting account of the life and teaching 
of the Buddha.] 

Lloyd (A.) The Wheat among the Tares : 
Studies of Buddhism in Japan. 146p. 

Macmillan, 1908. 

[A collection of Essays and Lectures, giving an 

unsystematic exposition of certain missionary 

problems of the Far East, with a plea for more 

systematic research. The author is Lecturer in 

the Imperial University, Tokyo, and was formerly 

Fellow of Peterhouse, Cambridge.] 

7 Franklin (Cecil A.), ed. The Jewish 

Literary Annual 196p. Routledge, 1908. 

[This sixth Jewish Literary Annual is of ex- 
ceptional interest, since it contains the five 
successful essays in the competition instituted in 
June 1907 by Mr Claude G. Monteflore.] 



o 

I 



Cohen (H. ) Some Notes on Resemblances 
of Hebrew and English Law. 

Jewish Q. R., July 1908. 

[I.e. Pentateuchal enactments.] 

Conybeare (F. C.) An Old Armenian 
Version of Josephus. J. Th. St. , July 1908. 

Levine (E) A Genizah Fragment of 
Genesis Rabba. Jewish Q. R., July 1908. 

[Text and notes.] 

Margoliouth (G.) The Doctrine of the 
Ether in the Kabbalah. 

Jewish Q. R., July 1908. 

[A title in some respects better, as the writer 



Buchler(A. ) TheBlessing 
in the Liturgy. Jewish Q. R., July 1908. 



says, would be the " Wlpi"! 7pQ) of Moses de 
Leon," of which much of the text is quoted and 
translated.] 

Robertson (E.) Notes on Javan, II. 

Jewish Q. R., July 1908. 

[Discusses Jemen and early JEgean civilisation.] 

Segal (M. H.) MiSnaic Hebrew and its 

Relation to Biblical Hebrew and to Aramaic. 

Jewish Q. R., July 1908. 

[Investigates the grammatical and lexical 
phenomena, and concludes that M. H. is absolutely 
independent in grammar of Aramaic. In the 
main it is identical with Bibl. Heb., and the 
differences are popular developments of older 
stages of the language, by natural living process.] 

Skipwith (G. H.) The Origins of the 
Religion of Israel. Jewish Q. R. , July 1908. 

[Concluding articles, collecting mythical data 
from wide sources and relating them to O.T. 
indications.] 

12 Mills (James Porter) Health : Omni- 
presence, Omniscience, Infinite, Abstract 
and Concrete. 319p. 

3 Cornwall Gardens, 1908. 

[Sets forth "the Principle and Practice of 
Mental and Spiritual Healing."] 

Goddard (H. G.} Mental Healing: Its 
Practical Side. New Church R. , July 1908. 

[Believes in a limited influence of mind upon 
mind not at all in Christian Science. Writer 
appears to be a physician.] 

Benson (Robert Hugh) Christian Science. 
Dub. R., July 1908. 

[Before Christian Science can be adequately 
met upon its own ground, it will be necessary 
that we know a great deal more about the de- 
partment of sub-conscious life which certainly 
underlies the conscious than we do at present.] 



P PHILOSOPHY. IQ " Metaphysics, 21 
Epistemology, 33 Psychical Research, 40 
Psychology, 60 " Logic, 70 " Systems, 90 " 
Philosophers. 

Dobson (G. R.) The Function of Philo- 
sophy as an Academic Discipline. 

J. of Phil., Aug. 13, 1908. 

[It is the specific and primary business of the 
philosophic department to assist the student to 
that unification of his mental life, to that organi- 
sation, which is the condition of growth.] 

Benrubi (J.) and others. Etudes sur le 
mouvement philosophique contemporain a 
1'etranger. 

Rev. de Meta. et de Morale, Sept. 1908. 

[A series of articles on Philosophy in Germany, 
by Benrubi ; in England, by J. 8. Mackenzie : in 
United States, by F. Thilly ; in Italy, by G. 
Amendola ; in Scandinavia, by H. Hoffding ; and 
in South America, by F. G. Calderon.] 

Ewald (Oscar) German Philosophy in 
1907. Phil. R., July 1908. 



238 



THE HIBBERT JOURNAL 



[The revival of the idealistic speculation from 
Kant to Hegel is still going on ; the neo-romantic 
movement has lost little intensity. There is at 
present also high appreciation of, and attention 
accorded to, Leibniz.] 

Ewald (Oskar) Die deutsche Philosophic 
im Jahre 1907. Kantstudien, xiii. 3, 1908. 

[The preceding article in German.] 
2 Palmer (William Scott) Presence and 
Omnipresence. Cont. R., June 1908. 

[A Christian study aided by the philosophy of 
Bergson. The interpretation of Spirit by Spirit 
is a vital process ; and the ways of our thought 
in relation to what we call substance and 
mechanism are not even analogous to it. ] 
10 Aimel (Georges) Individualisme et philoso- 
phic bergsonien tie. Rev.de Phil. , June 1908. 

[Considers the philosophy of Bergsou as a 
thorough-going system;of individualism.] 

Bowne (Borden Parker) Personalism : 
Common Sense and Philosophy. 336p. 

Constable, 1908. 

[The aim of these lectures is to show that 
critical reflection brings us back again to the 
personal metaphysics which Corate rejected. 
Causal explanation must always be in terms of 
personality, or it must vanish altogether. Thus 
we return to the theological stage, but we do so 
with a difference. We now see that law and will 
must be united in our thought of the world. 
Man's earliest metaphysics re-emerges in his 
latest ; but enlarged, enriched, and purified by 
the ages of thought and experience,] 

Cuche (P. J.) Le proces de 1'Absolu. 

Rev. dePhil., June, July 1908. 

[Examines various views, chiefly that of Herbert 
Spencer.] 

Parsons (J. D. ) Realta et Oggettivita. 
Coenobium, May 1908. 

Trendelenburg (Adolf) Zur Geschichte 
des Wortes Person. Nachgelassene Abhand- 
lung eingefiihrt von Rudolf Eucken. 

Kantstudien, xiii. 1 and 2, 1908. 

Meyerson (Emile) Identite et Realit4. 
438p. Alcan, 1908. 

[See p. 210.] 

12 Messer (August) Heinrich Gomperz' 
W eltanschauungslehre. 

Kantstudien, xiii. 3, 1908. 
[A criticism of the first volume of Oomperz's 
work.] 

13 Anon. The Question of Life in Mars. 

Edin. R., July 1908. 

[Neither Lowell nor A. E. Wallace has suc- 
ceeded in the task which he undertook.] 

Wallace (Alfred Mussel) The Present 
Position of Darwinism. Cont. R., Aug. 1908. 

[Examines the theories which are claimed to 
be, in whole or part, a substitute for Darwin's 
explanation of organic evolution by means of 
Natural Selection viz. the theories of the Neo- 
Lamarckists, the Mutationists, and the 
Mendelians.] 

Atkinson (Mabel) The Struggle for 

Existence in Relation to Morals and Religion. 

Phil. R., April 1908. 

[The conception of the underlying similarity of 
the progress of life through natural selection, and 
through conscious community of existence, 
explains and enlarges Huxley's views. It turns 
out that man is not a fragile reed, a delicate plant 
in an artificial garden, but that he embodies in 
himself, in a better and higher form, the same 
forces that urge on the cosmic process of life.] 

Vieilleton (L. ) La loi biog^netique fonda- 
mentale de Haeckel. 

Rev. de Meta. et de Mor., July 1908. 

Poulton (E. B.) Essays on Evolution, 
1889-1907. 527p. Clarendon Press, 1908. 



Berthelot (Rent,) 6volutionisme et Platon- 
isme : Melanges d'histoire de la Philosophic 
et d'histoire des Sciences. Alcan, 1908. 

[Author deals with "1'evolutionisme mecaniste " 
of Darwin and Spencer, with " 1'evolutionisme 
romantique et vitaliste " of Guyau, Nietzsche, 
and Bergson, and aims at showing that evolution- 
ism can also be a " philosophic idealiste."] 
14 Russell (Leonard J.) Space and Mathe- 
matical Reasoning. Mind, July 1908. 

[An able article, developing a view of space on 
lines suggested by Kant's work. The author 
criticises Mr Bertrand Russell's theory of space. 
If we are to hold seriously to absolute space, and 
if it is to be of any value to us, we must consider 
it as in some way interacting with the matter 
in it.] 

21 Leighton (Joseph A.) The Final Ground 
of Knowledge. Phil. R., July 1908. 

[There can be no truth or knowledge which 
does not obtain in and for some minds. And, 
since there can be no world of existents unquali- 
fied by truth, there can be no world of existents 
without a world-mind. In a final analysis the 
objectivity of truth, the valid reference of know- 
ledge to reality, depends on the reality of a single, 
systematic intelligence.] 

Boodin (John E.) Energy and Reality. 
I. Is Experience Self-Supporting ? II. The 
Definition of Energy. 

J. of Phil., July 2 and 16, 1908. 

[Experience in many ways seems to depend 
upon an extra-experiential constitution. The 
concept of energy is a dual concept involving 
process or stuff, on the one hand, and constancy 
or uniformity of processes, on the other. ] 

Moore (A. W.) Truth Value. 

J. of Phil. , July 30, 1908. 

[Truth-value is the value of the entire experi- 
ence of readjusting conflicting values through the 
process of redistribution of values effected by 
interaction with a wider and relatively more 
permanent range of relevant values.] 

Bouyssonie (A.) De la reduction a 
1'unite des principes de la raison. 

Rev. dePhil., Aug. 1908. 

Schmitt (Eugen H,) Kritik der Philo- 
sophic vom Standpunkt der intuitiven 
Erkenntnis. 515p. Eckhardt, 1908. 

Rey (Abel) L'e"nergetique et le mecan- 
isme au point de vue des conditions de la 
connaissance. 186p. Alcan, 1908. 

Spir (A.) Denken und Wirklichkeit. 
Versuch einer Erneuerung der kritischen 
Philosophic. 4te Aufl. mit Titelbild nebst 
eine Skizze iiber des Autors Lebeu und 
Lehre von Helene Claparede-Spir. 577p. 

Earth, 1908. 

[This new edition is edited by the author's 
daughter, who writes an interesting account of 
her father's life and teaching.] 

25 Baensch (Otto) Ueber historische Kau- 

salitut. Kantstudien, xiii., 1 and 2, 1908. 

27 Weber (L.) La finalit^ en biologic et son 

fondement mecanique. Rev. Phil. .July 1908. 

[Maintains that causation is final causation, that 

ia to say, the causality of creative and directive 

ideas. The domain of life is par excellence the 

domain of finality, and biological facts can only 

be interpreted by means of teleological ideas.] 

33 Johnson (Alice) On the Automatic 

Writing of Mrs Holland. 

Proc. S.P.R., lv., June 1908. 

[A careful and thorough piece of investigation.] 

Barrett ( W. F.) On the Threshold of a 

New World of Thought : An Examination 

of the Phenomena of Sj iritualism . 1 27p. 

Kegan Paul, 1908. 



RECENT LITERATURE BIBLIOGRAPHY 239 



Bennett (Edward T. ) The Direct Pheno- 
of Spiritualism : Speaking, Writing, 
wing. Music. Painting. 64p. 

Rider, 1908. 
40 Qemelli(A.) Le fondement biologique de 
la Psychologie. Rev. Neo-Scol., May 1908. 
Witasek (Stephan) Grundlinien der 
Psychologie. 400p. Diirr, 1908. 

[This little volume is of extreme interest, 
written, as it is, from the point of view of 
Meinong and the Graz psychologists. The treat- 
t of thought, and the higher mental pro- 
is especially noteworthy.] 
Seashore (Carl K) Elementary Experi- 
mts in Psychology. 227p. Holt, 1908. 
Tawney (G. A.) Ultimate Hypotheses 
Psychology. J. of Phil., Aug. 13, 1908. 
[Discusses Professor Calkin's recent papers.] 
Ross (E. Alsworth) Social Psychology: 
Ln Outline and Source Book. 388p. 

Macmillan, 1908. 

[A pioneer treatise in what is, as yet, an infant 
e. Social psychology treats of the psychic 
i and currents that arise in consequence of 
_ian association. Its phenomena may be con- 
iered under the heads of Social Ascendency and 
Individual Ascendency. Author acknowledges 
lebtedness to Gabriel Tarde.] 
Mauss (M.) L'Art et le My the d'apres 
fundt. Rev. Phil., July 1908. 

[A critical account of Wundt's Volkerpsycho- 
pfc.] 

Trotter (W.) Herd Instinct and its 
ig on the Psychology of Civilised 
Sociological R., July 1908. 
Lindsay (J. ) Psychology of the Soul. 

Princeton Th. R., July 1908. 
Kirkpatrick (E. A.) The Part Played 
Consciousness in Mental Operations. 

J. of Phil., July 30, 1908. 
[The subconscious explanation is readily used 
td difficult to test in any reliable way. Hence 
seems safer for the scientist to attempt to 
the physiological explanation until more is 
iwn.] 

Ramon (A.} Mysticisme et subcon- 
ience. R. prat d'Apologet., July 1, 1908. 
,inst Delacroix (Etudes d'histoire et de 
logie), who would regard mysticism as an 

of the subconscious.] 

Beers (Clifford W.) A Mind that Found 
slf: An Autobiography. 37lp. 

Longmans, 1908. 

[An account of the coming to itself of a mind 
that was deranged.] 

48 Sollier (P. )et Danville (G.} Passion dujeu 
i manie dujeu. Rev. Phil., June 1908. 
[Beside normal passion, play appears patho- 
ically as the equivalent of certain hysterical 
nifestations, of constitutional morbidness, and 
of moral depression.] 

Rageot (G.) Le probleme experimental 
temps. Rev. Phil., July 1908. 

Turro (R.} Psychologie de 1'equilibre 
lu corps humain. 

Rev. de Phil., June, July 1908. 
Dagnan-Bouveret (J.) L'aphasie et les 
localisations cerebrales. 

Rev. de Meta. et de Mor., July 1908. 
Bailey (Thomas P.) Organic Sensation 



J. of Phil., July 16, 1908. 
58 Wodehouse (Helen) Judgment and 
Apprehension. Mind, July 1908. 

[Supports the thesis that judgment and appre- 
hension are identical, and examines Stout's 



arguments on the other side. The division be- 
tween judgment and apprehension disappears so 
soon as we remove from judgment the shadow 
of a mysteriousness and complication which it 
really does not possess.] 

54 Ziehen(Th.) Das Gedaohtnis. 50p. 

Hirschwald, 1908. 

55 Lucka(E.) Die Phantasie. 197p. 

Braumiiller, 1908. 

Winch ( W. H. ) The Function of Images. 
J. of Phil., June 18, 1908. 
[Tries to distinguish "image" from "sensa- 
tion" and from "thought." Argues that the 
function of "images" has been much over-esti- 
mated.] 

59 Wodehouse (Helen-) The Logic of Will : 
A Study in Analogy. 176p. 

Macmillan, 1908. 

[Attempts to give some elaboration to the 
general analogy between cognition and conation. 
The analogy is of considerable value psychologi- 
cally, but it is of less value in speculative meta- 
physics and the investigation of the relation 
between truth and goodness.] 

60 Vail&ti (Giovanni) On Material Repre- 
sentations of Deductive Processes. 

J. of Phil., June 4, 1908. 

61 Sageret (J. ) La Curiosite Scientifique. 

Rev. Phil., June 1908. 
[All human actions arise from curiosity, inter- 
ested or disinterested, and division as to scientific 
problems can only cease when curiosity concern- 
ing them shall cease.) 

72 Valensin (A. ) La theorie de 1'experience 
d'apres Kant. Rev. de Phil., July 1908. 

Stadler (August) Die Frage als Prinzip 
des Erkennens und die Einleitung der 
Kritik der reinen Vernunft. 

Kantstudien, xiii. 3, 1908. 

[By the will the sensory impression becomes an 
end, through questioning or inquiry an object of 
knowledge, a problem.] 

Schubert- Soldern (Richard v.) Die 
Grundfragen der Aesthetik uuter kritischer 
Zugrundelegung von Kants Kritik der 
Urteilskraft. Kantstudien, xiii. 3, 1908. 

[Not a discussion of the fundamental notions 
of ^Esthetics according to Kant, but a further 
working out of these ideas apart from Metaphysics.] 

Bauch (Bruno) Kant in neuer ultra- 
montan- und liberal-katholischer Beleuch- 
tung. Kantstudien, xiii. 1 and 2, 1908. 

Spranger (Eduard) W. v. Humboldt 
und Kant. Kantstudien, xiii. 1 and 2, 1908. 

Ewald ( Oscar) Kants kritischer Idealie- 
mus als Grundlage von Erkenntnistheorie 
und Ethik. 323p. Hofmann, 1908. 

73 Braun(0.) Die Entwickelung des Gottes- 
begriffes bei Schelling. 

Z. f. Phil. u. Phil. Krit, cxxxi. 2, 1908. 

[An appreciative account of Schelling's doctrine 
at different stages of its development.] 

Kinkel ( W. ) Schelling's Rede : Ueber das 
Verhaltnis der bildenden Kiinste zur Natur. 

Z. f. Phil. u. Phil. Krit., cxxxi. 2, 1908. 

Korwan (Anton) Schelling und die 
Philosophic der Gegenwart. 

Z. f. Phil. u. Phil. Krit., cxxxi. 2, 1908. 

[Lays emphasis upon Schelling's Natur- 
philosophie as being in many features reproduced 
in modern thinking. Also Schelling's ^Esthetic 
is still deserving of study.] 

Schmidt (Ferdinand Jakob) Zur Wieder- 

eburt des Idealismus. Philosophische 
tudien. 243p. Diirr, 1908. 

[This collection of essays is of interest as 
indicating in Gel-many a tendency of return to 



240 



THE HIBBERT JOURNAL 



Hegel. The author writes from the point of view 
of -Hegelian idealism, and deals in a very suggestive 
way with present-day problems.] 

Schwarz (H. ) Ein markantes Buch in der 
neu-idealistischen Bewegung. 

Z. f. Phil. u. Phil. Krit., cxxxi. 2, 1908. 

[Deals with Schmidt's Zur Wiedergeburt det 
Idealismus. Author maintains that German 
thought has recently been untrue to the natural 
course of its development, and under foreign 
influence has followed the unfruitful path of 
Empiricism.) 

Miinsterberg (Hugo) Philosophic der 
Werte. Grundziige einer Weltanschauung. 
489p. Earth, 1908. 

[In this important work the author attempts to 
show in the light of modern thought the truth of 
what Fichte announced a hundred years ago, that 
philosophy reveals a Life which is eternal and 
which remains the same in all change. There is 
developed in the first part a theory of values, and 
in the second a system of values. The book is 
dedicated to Royce. Review will follow.] 
74 Hibben(John Grier) The Test of Prag- 
matism. Phil. R., July 1908. 

[1. Pragmatism is inadequate as a working 
hypothesis. 2. It is inadequate, because in its 
application we subordinate it to other considera- 
tions. 3. It is inadequate, because of the limita- 
tion of its alleged creative function.] 

Dewey (John) The Logical Character of 
Ideas. J. of Phil. , July 2, 1908. 

[Reply to Pratt.] 

Walker (Leslie J.) Martineau and the 
Humanists. Mind, July 1908. 

[Intellectualism exaggerates the functions of 
thought; Martineau and the Humanists unduly 
curtail them, and confuse them with the 
functions of sense. Martineau is as much the 
enemy of intellectualism in Ethics as the 
Humanist is its enemy in Epistemology, and the 
fact is due to a similar cause, partly to his Volun- 
tarism and partly to his rejection of the objective 
point of view.] 

Berthelot (JR.) Sur le Pragmatisme de 
Nietzsche. 

Rev. de Me"ta. et de Mor., July 1908. 

[Nietzsche did not know the name, but he was 
the first clearly to apprehend what is now 
described as "pragmatism." Author gives a 
detailed exposition of the pragmatism of Nietzsche, 
and deals with its origin (i.) in romanticism, and 
(ii.)in utilitarianism.] 

Stettheimer (Ettie) The Will to Believe 
as a Basis for the Defence of Religious Faith : 
A Critical Study. (Archives of Philosophy. ) 
103p. Science Press, 1907. 

[Criticises James's theory (i.) by comparing it 
with related doctrines for the purpose of bringing 
into relief its individual character, and (ii.) by 
examining into its coherence for the purpose of 
exhibiting its inherent inconsistency.] 

Hebert (Marcel) Le Pragmatisme : 
Etude de ses diverses formes, anglo-ameri- 
caines, frangaises et italiennes et de sa 
valeur religieuse. Nourry, 1908. 

[Seep. 218.] 

77 Salvadori (Guglielmo) Positivism in 
Italy. J. of Phil., Aug. 13, 1908. 

[Discussion of philosophies of Ardigb and 
Varisco.] 

Crespi( Angela) The Principle of Causality 
in Italian Scientific Philosophy. 

Mind, July 1908. 

[An account of the philosophy of Professor 
Robert Ardigb, of Padua.] 



80 Burnet (J.) Early Greek Philosophy, 
2nd ed. 433p. Black, 1908. 

[Largely re-written in the light of discoveries 
made since the publication of the first edition in 
1892, "above all that of the extracts from 
Menon's 'larptKa," which have furnished, so the 
author thinks, a clue to the history of 
Pythagoreanism.] 

89 Rousselot (Pierre) L'lntellectualisme de 
Saint Thomas. 250p. Alcan, 1908. 

[A very careful and thorough account of the 
teaching of Aquinas. Part I. deals with intellec- 
tion as such ; Part II. with human speculation 
and its value ; Part III. with intelligence and 
human action ; whilst in a concluding section 
intellectualism as religious philosophy is con- 
sidered.] 

Rousselot (Pierre} Pour 1'histoire du 
probleme de 1'amour au moyen age. 
(Beitrage zur Geschichte der Philosophic 
des Mittelalters. ) I04p. 

Aschendorffsche Buchhandlung, 1908. 

90 Piat (Clodius) De 1'iutuition en TheV 
dice"e. Rev. Neo-Scol., May 1908. 

[Largely a discussion of Malebranche's theory 
of the idea of infinite being.] 
92 Block (Leon) La philosophic de Newton. 
643p. Alcan, 1908. 

Milhaud (G.) La philosophic de New- 
ton, par M. L. Bloch. 

Rev. de Meta. et de Mor., July 1908. 
[A very appreciative review.] 
94V Anon. Herbert Spencer. 

Edin. R., July 1908. 

[Along with a wonderful excess of originality 
there went in Spencer a great deficiency of 
receptivity. The details of his character gain 
their chief interest from the fact that a know- 
ledge of them greatly aids the comprehension of 
his works.] 
Potion (G. S. ) Beyond Good and Evil. 

Princeton Th. R., July 1908. 
[A presentation of Nietzsche's teaching.] 

V ART. 83 Sacred Music. 

Muller-Freienfels (R.) Zur Theorie der 
aesthetischen Elementarerscheinungen, II. 
Vierteljahrssch. f. w. Phil, xxxii. 2, 1908. 

[ii. Konsonanzerscheinungen. iii. Die Elemen- 
tarformen der bildenden Kunst.l 

Lalo (Oh. ) Les sens esthe"tiques, II. 

Rev. Phil., June 1908. 

[Forms and sounds are the only things for 
which we have both receptive and producing 
organs. Accordingly, {esthetic sensations, being 
both active and passive, can only be given by 
sight and hearing. ] 

Sentroul(C.) La Verite dans 1'Art. III. 
L'ceuvre d'art, expression d'une concep- 
tion esthe"tique inspire'e par le re'el. 

Rev. Ne"o-Scol., May 1908. 

Bryan (J. Ingram) The Secret of 

Japanese Art. Albany R., June 1908. 

83 Anon. Hymnology, Classic and Romantic. 

Edin. R., July 1908. 

Gasquet (Abbot) and Bishop (Edmund), 
eds. The Bosworth Psalter : An Account 
of a Manuscript formerly belonging to O. 
Turville-Petrie,Esq.,nowAddit.,MS.37,517 
at British Museum. 189p. Bell, 1908. 

[Editors think that the Psalter dates from the 
earlier years of St Dunstan's archiepiscopate, and 
was probably written for him.] 



[NOTE. For an explanation of the system of classification adopted in the Bibliography, 
readers are referred to HIBBERT JOURNAL, vol. i. p. 630 sqq.] 

G. D. H. and J. H. W. 



THE 

j HIBBERT JOURNAL 

SOME RECENT INVESTIGATIONS BY THE 
OCIETY FOR PSYCHICAL RESEARCH. 

THE RIGHT HON. GERALD W. BALFOUR. 

UCH attention has been given during the last few years by 
Society for Psychical Research to the subject of auto- 
tic writing, and especially to the phenomena now known 
cross-correspondences" exhibited by the scripts of a 
particular group of automatic writers. Apart from their 
intrinsic interest, some have seen in these phenomena the 
promise of a new and powerful instrument of investigation 
which might even make it possible to apply an effective test 
to the authenticity of communications purporting to come 
from disembodied spirits. One object of the present paper 
will be to inquire how far such an expectation appears to 
be well founded. 

In the first place, what precisely is meant by a cross- 
correspondence ? 

The term has hardly yet been submitted to strict definition. 
Let us suppose A and B to be writers of automatic script 
sitting at the same hour on the same day in London and 
Edinburgh respectively. If, under such conditions, A's script 
describes correctly facts relating to the surroundings of B, 

of which A could have no normal knowledge, this would 
VOL. VII. No. 2. 241 16 



242 THE HIBBERT JOURNAL 

certainly seem to point to some kind of telepathic rapport 
between the two automatists, but would it constitute a cross- 
correspondence ? As employed by Mrs Verrall, 1 the term 
would apparently include such cases. On the other hand, 
Miss Johnson, in her valuable chapter 2 on the " Theory of 
Cross- Correspondences," prefers to restrict it to cases " in which 
independent references to the same topic occur at about the 
same time in the scripts of both writers." Mr Piddington, 
to whose labours and very arduous labours they must have 
been we owe the latest and by far the most important 
collection of correspondences yet published, is very sparing 
of discussion on the general aspects of the question, being 
for the most part content to refer the reader to Miss Johnson's 
essay. 

If the wide extension implied in Mrs Verrall's application 
of the term is legitimate, it is not easy to see how a simple 
correspondence is to be distinguished from a cross-corre- 
spondence. In the natural signification of the word, a cross- 
correspondence between two automatic writers A and B 
would appear to imply a cross-reference, i.e. a reference of 
A to B and of B to A. It was probably this consideration 
which led Miss Johnson to restrict the term to cases " where 
references to the same topic occur independently in the two 
scripts," and refuse it to cases " where one automatist describes 
correctly some fact about the other." Yet even thus some 
difficulties remain. From one point of view, the meaning 
given to the word by Miss Johnson may be thought too 
narrow. Let us suppose a case in which the script of A 
correctly describes B's surroundings, while that of B correctly 
describes A's surroundings. There would certainly seem to 
be a reciprocity of reference here, yet the case would not 
rank as a cross-correspondence in Miss Johnson's sense, 

1 In her Report on her own Automatic Writings, Proceedings of the S.P.R., 
vol. xx. 

2 Proceedings of the S.PR., vol. xxi. " On the Automatic Writing of Mrs 
Holland/' chapter vii. 



RECENT PSYCHICAL RESEARCH 243 

inasmuch as the two scripts could not be said to refer to 
the same topic. Passing by this objection, however, it may 
possibly be argued from another point of view that Miss 
Johnson's application of the term is too wide. Is it certain 
that every case in which references to the same topic occur 
independently in two scripts is necessarily a case of reciprocal 
erence? If other personal happenings in connection with 
may be apprehended telepathically by B and appear in B's 
;ript without being held to constitute a cross-correspondence, 
y not A's automatic writing also? For that too is a 
rsonal happening in connection with A, and it is at least 
doubtful whether, regarded as an object of telepathic appre- 
hension by B, it is properly distinguishable from A's other 
rsonal happenings. 

In whatever way this doubt may be resolved and perhaps 
satisfactory solution is possible without a clearer insight 
to the nature of telepathy than we at present possess it 
gests a question of great importance in relation to the 
vestigations with which we are here concerned. Can corre- 
ndences between the scripts (or trance-utterances) of different 
tomatists take such a form that, t /ro??z the peculiarities of that 
m alone, we are entitled to infer something beyond a simple 
lepathic perception by one automatist of what is consciously 
subconsciously present to the mind of another ? 
It is to Miss Johnson that belongs the merit of having been 
e first to raise this question, though not exactly in the shape 
re given to it. When studying the proofs of Mrs Verrall's 
port early in 1906, Miss Johnson was " struck by the fact 
at in some of the most remarkable instances [of cross-corres- 
ndences contained in the Report] the statements in the script 
f one writer were by no means a simple reproduction of state- 
ents in the script of the other, but seemed to represent 
ifferent aspects of the same idea, one supplementing or 
complementing the other." Furthermore, this peculiarity 
appeared to be emphasised by passages in Mrs Verrall's own 
ript, indicating that it was not accidental but deliberate. A 






244 THE HIBBERT JOURNAL 

considerable number of such passages have been collected by 
Miss Johnson, and included in her chapter on the Theory of 
Cross-Correspondences. A few of these may be quoted here : 

9,1th Oct. 1902. Mrs [Forbes] has the other words piece together. Add 
hers to yours. 

31st Oct. 1902. You have not understood all try further. She has some 
words incomplete to be added to and pieced and make the clue. 

3rd Nov. 1902. I will give the words between you neither alone can read, 
but together they will give the clue he wants. 

10th Aug. 1904-. Sit regularly and wait. I want something quite different 
tried you are not to guess, and you will probably not understand what you 
write. But keep it all, and say nothing about it yet. Then at Christmas, or 
perhaps before, you can compare your own words with another's, and the truth 
will be manifest. 

That the above passages are apposite to the new type of 
cross-correspondences which Miss Johnson believed herself to 
have discovered will not be disputed. " The characteristic of 
these cases," she goes on to say, " is that we do not get in the 
writing of one automatist anything like a mechanical verbatim 
reproduction of the phrases in the other ; we do not even get 
the same idea expressed in different ways as might well 
result from direct telepathy between them. What we get is a 
fragmentary utterance in one script, which seems to have no 
particular point or meaning, and another fragmentary utterance 
in the other, of an equally pointless character ; but when we 
put the two together, we see that they supplement one another, 
and that there is apparently one coherent idea underlying both, 
but only partially expressed in each." 

It is evident that the type of cross-correspondence here 
described might be realised in very different degrees of per- 
fection in different cases. Its possible significance may 
perhaps be most conveniently illustrated by an imaginary 
example intended to represent it at its best. 

When the Shakespear-Bacon controversy was at its height 
and the discovery of recondite cryptograms was the order of the 
day, some ingenious person happened to find out that in the 
46th Psalm, as printed in the Authorised Version of the Bible, 
the forty-sixth word from the beginning is " shake," and the 



RECENT PSYCHICAL RESEARCH 245 

forty-sixth word from the end is " spear." Now suppose that 
three automatic writers sit simultaneously in three different 
laces, and produce script independently of each other that 
to say, without collusion and without normally acquired 
nowledge on the part of any of the three of what the others 
writing. On comparison it is found that A's script refers 
the Bible version of the 46th Psalm, B's to Shakespear, 
hile that of C contains an injunction to count forty-six from 
e beginning and forty-six from the end, without specifying 
hat it is that has to be counted. 

With this imaginary example before us, let us return to the 
uestion which we left unanswered a while since : Is it possible 
r a cross-correspondence to take such a form as to entitle us, 
m the mere peculiarities of that form, to infer something 
yond a simple telepathic perception by one automatist of 
hat is consciously or subconsciously present to the mind of 
other ? A brief consideration of our imaginary case shows, 
think, that this question must be answered in the affirmative, 
ven if one or all of the automatists knew of the cryptogram, 
e fact that the three scripts so dove-tailed into each other 
that their real significance became apparent only on comparison 
would be insufficiently accounted for by a mere quasi-passive 
psychical rapport between the writers. It would be at once 
felt that we had here evidence of the active intervention of 
urpose and design. If many such cases occurred, the evidence 
r purposive action would be irresistible. Understanding, 
en, by " simple telepathy " a telepathic community of 
ental content into which the element of deliberate intention 
d design does not enter, it will be admitted, I think, that 
e peculiar type of cross-correspondence we are now con- 
idering is capable of carrying us beyond simple telepathy. 

But how far will it carry us ? Let me quote Miss Johnson 
once more. " It occurred to me then," she writes, " that by 
this method [i.e. by means of cross-correspondences in which 

fie script provides a complement to the other], if by any, it 
ight be possible to obtain evidence more 'conclusive than any 



246 THE HIBBERT JOURNAL 

obtained hitherto of the action of a third intelligence external 
to the minds of both automatists. If we simply find the same 
idea expressed even though in different forms by both of 
them, it may, as I have just said, most easily be explained by 
telepathy between them ; but it is much more difficult to 
suppose that the telepathic perception of one fragment could 
lead to the production of another fragment which can only 
after careful comparison be seen to be related to the first." 

Similarly, Mr Piddington, after remarking that the simple 
type of coincidence which consists in the production of the 
same word or phrase through two automatists is easy enough 
to explain as the result of telepathic interchange between them, 
but that "this theory seemed inadequate to cover some of 
the more complex forms of cross-correspondence inherent in 
Mrs Verrall's and Mrs Holland's scripts, which appeared to 
point to the action of some third mind," adds that as he and 
his co-workers reflected on the problem they " came to realise 
how cross-correspondences might be so elaborated as to afford 
almost conclusive proof of the intervention of a third mind, 
and strong evidence of the identity of this third mind." 

These are high hopes ; but if they are to prove well 
grounded, it is clear, I think, that they must be based on 
something besides the merely formal or structural peculiarities 
of a special type of cross-correspondence. Those peculiarities 
may indeed justify us in inferring intelligent action directed to 
the attainment of an end ; but there remains the possibility 
that the intelligent action has its source within one of the 
automatists themselves. And to determine this question if 
indeed it can be determined we must take account not merely 
of the form of the cross-correspondence, but also every other 
circumstance that can throw light upon it. 

The term "cross-correspondence" has probably become 
too deeply engrained in the technical language of Psychical 
Research to be easily got rid of ; otherwise it might be better 
to discard it, and divide correspondences between automatic 
scripts into two classes, which I should propose to call simple 



RECENT PSYCHICAL RESEARCH 247 

and complementary correspondences respectively. No doubt 
the two classes pass by insensible gradations into each other : 
also, it must be admitted that any correspondence, to which- 
ever class assigned, may be the result of purposive activity. 
But, speaking generally, in simple correspondences the form 
gives no indication of purpose ; in complementary correspond- 
ences there is ground for suspecting purpose, though the ground 
may be far from amounting to a proof ; a repetition of extreme 
cases of " dove-tailing," as exhibited in our imaginary example, 

rould convert suspicion into practical certainty. 

The voluminous automatic script of Mrs Verrall, Miss 

r errall, Mrs Holland, Mrs Forbes, Mrs Piper, and others, 
from 1901 onwards, published by the Society for Psychical 
jarch, contains a very considerable number of correspon- 

mces both of the simple and of the complementary type. 

"hese deserve the most careful study by all who are interested 
the subject. In particular, the paper by Mr J. G. Piddington, 

ititled " A Series of Concordant Automatisms," which fills the 

>st part of a bulky number of the Society's Proceedings issued 
October last, forms in some respects the most important 

attribution to Psychical Research that has been made within 
jnt years. 

In saying this I am far from wishing to disparage the value 
the earlier Reports which we owe to Mrs Verrall and Miss 
(ohnson. But the correspondences to be found in those reports 
cannot compare either in number or in complexity with the 
later series. Perhaps this was to be expected, whatever 
explanation we incline to give of the results obtained. By 
the time the later series began, the importance of cross- 
correspondences and the evidential possibilities which they 
seemed to hold out had been fully realised by members of the 
Society, largely owing to the labours of Mrs Verrall and Miss 
Johnson themselves. The conduct of a series of cross-corre- 
spondence experiments was, indeed, one main reason why the 
Society invited Mrs Piper to come over. This was of course 
known to those who had the management of Mrs Piper's 



248 THE HIBBERT JOURNAL 

sittings (described by Mr Piddington as the " experimenters 
in charge "), and to Mrs Verrall, who frequently sat to obtain 
automatic writing at hours adjusted to those of Mrs Piper's 
trance. It was also known to Miss Verrall, and, during the 
latter half of the period over which the sittings extended, to 
Mrs Holland as well. Though withheld from Mrs Piper in her 
normal state, it was freely mentioned in her presence when in 
the trance condition. Her trance-personalities were constantly 
encouraged to produce cross - correspondences through the 
various automatists, and a message was conveyed to them 
(veiled, it is true, in Latin, a language not understood by Mrs 
Piper) laying special stress on the importance of correspondences 
of the complementary type. 

In these conditions 71 sittings, extending from 15th 
November 1906 to 2nd June 1907, in the course of which 
some 120 " experiments " were tried, resulted in a number of 
more or less successful cases of cross-correspondence sufficient 
to occupy several hundred pages of print and as many as 
twenty- three subject-headings in Mr Piddington's Report. 

The Platonic Socrates remarks somewhere concerning the 
writings of Heraclitus the Obscure, that it needed a stout 
swimmer to win through them. It is to be feared that many, 
even of those who have had the courage to take the first 
plunge, will feel something of the same kind about Mr 
Piddington's paper. But the author himself is hardly to blame 
for this. It is inherent in the material with which he has to 
work. The tedious and bewildering incoherence of the auto- 
matic writings, the curiously intricate and allusive character 
of many of the cross-correspondences, which often require real 
ingenuity and some literary knowledge to detect and unravel, 
the number of sittings over which a single experiment may 
extend, and the number of different scripts which have to be 
compared at every turn these and other difficulties make 
brevity and lucidity practically impossible. It may be added 
that they are difficulties for a reviewer as well as for the 
author. How is he 'to deal with such a mass of material, 




RECENT PSYCHICAL RESEARCH 249 

the evidential value of which can only be estimated by careful 
attention to minute detail ? The task might well seem almost 
a hopeless one within the limits of a magazine article ; and 
yet I feel that an attempt must be made to describe a few 
at least of the incidents recorded with such fulness in Mr 
Piddington's Report, if only to enable the reader unacquainted 
with the original to form, by the help of actual examples, 
some more concrete idea of the phenomena obtained. 

It should be clearly understood, however, that these 
pies can only serve as illustrations, and that even as 
illustrations they are not to be regarded as samples from 
which the character and quality of the entire series can 
fairly be judged. 

The six weeks from the middle of March to the end of 
April were peculiarly prolific of triple correspondences between 
the scripts of Mrs Piper, Mrs Verrall, and Mrs Holland ; Mrs 
Holland writing throughout the period in India, Mrs Piper 
in London, and Mrs Verrall either in Cambridge or at 
Matlock Bath. 

Two of these cases are described in the report under the 
headings "Cup" and "Thanatos." They are both of them 
interesting and instructive examples, though in the former 
the part played by Mrs Holland might fairly be set down to 
chance coincidence ; but I pass them over in order to select 
for more detailed treatment three other cases which, taken 
together, afford perhaps the best specimen of complementary 
correspondence to be found in the whole volume. I propose 
to consider them separately in the first instance, and afterwards 
in relation to each other. 

1. It is worthy of remark that Mrs Piper's share in this 
series of triple correspondences is a comparatively subordinate 
one. In the case I shall give first it is confined to the words 
" Light in West " uttered during the " waking stage " l on 
the 8th of April. The piecemeal ejaculations which invariably 

1 Mrs Piper passes into a deep self-induced trance before she begins to 
write. The " waking stage/' or process of " coming to/' lasts several minutes. 



250 THE HIBBERT JOURNAL 

proceed from Mrs Piper during the " waking stage " are often 
quite as significant as the script itself. They frequently serve 
to indicate particular words or phrases as subjects of a cross- 
correspondence ; and it is probable that such an indication was 
meant to be given in the present instance. 

Be that as it may, Mrs Holland's script, written a few 
hours earlier on the same day in India, contained the 
following passage : 

The Constellation of Orion. 

The tall spire shows above the mellow redness of the wall. Do you 
remember that exquisite sky when the afterglow made the East as beautiful and 
as richly coloured as the West Martha became as Mary, and Leah as Rachel. 

Also on the same day, but a few hours later, at Cambridge, 
Mrs Verrall wrote : 

The words were from Maud, but you did not understand. 

" Rosy is the East/' and so on. 

You will find that you have written a message for Mr Piddington which you 
did not understand but he did. Tell him that. 

The words " You will find that you have written a message," 
etc., almost certainly indicate that a cross-correspondence is 
to be looked for. That a cross-correspondence does exist is 
evident ; and that it is closer than might appear at first glance 
a brief consideration will show. 

The words " Rosy is the East " in Mrs Yen-all's script are 
a misquotation from Tennyson's Maud, and were at once seen 
to be so by Mrs Yerrall herself. They should be " Rosy is 
the West." The substitution of East for West may be a mere 
error, but it may also be deliberate ; and there is at least one 
other instance in Mrs Yen-all's script of a misquotation which 
would be fully explained by supposing it to be employed for 
the express purpose of emphasising the word that has replaced 
the correct one. On this interpretation, Mrs Yen-all's Rosy is 
the East will stand in marked contrast with Mrs Piper's 
Light in West. 

Next, let us turn to Mrs Holland's script : " Do you 
remember that exquisite sky when the afterglow made the 
East as beautiful and as richly coloured as the West Martha 



RECENT PSYCHICAL RESEARCH 251 

became as Mary, and Leah as Rachel." Here the contrast 
! is transcended. East and West become as one. The two 
opposites are united and identified, even as though Dante's 
types of the Active and the Contemplative life had passed one 
into the other Martha had become as Mary, Leah as Rachel. 1 
Two further points remain to be noticed. First, Mr 
Piddington has given some plausible reasons for thinking that 
the mention in Mrs Holland's script of " the Constellation of 
Orion " is a reference to Maud. If this surmise is right, it 
provides another point of connection between Mrs Holland's 
script of the 8th of April and Mrs Verrall's of the same date. 
Secondly, the unification of East and West, explicit in Mrs 
Holland's script, is suggested in Mrs Verrall's also. For 
immediately preceding the line out of Maud misquoted in 
Mrs Verrall's script comes this verse : 






Blush from West to East, 
Blush from East to West ; 

Till the West is East, 
Blush it thro' the West. 



These various coincidences, and especially the way in which 
the different scripts fit into each other, seem to rank this case 
as a good example of a complementary correspondence, even 

en taken by itself. 

2. The next case, inferior to the preceding in respect of 
simultaneity in the production of the concordant scripts, is in 
other ways not less remarkable. It begins with two scripts 
written by Mrs Verrall : the second and most important of the 
two on the 25th of March, the earlier on the 4th of the same 
month. For reasons which will appear later, it is desirable to 
quote both of these scripts in full, or nearly so. 

Mrs Verrall" s Script of 4th March. 



Hercules Furens. Tell your husband from me, there is a passage in the 
Heracles not understood, about the pillar and the tying to it. An 
old story lies behind that but it means something in Euripides that 

1 See Dante, Convito, iv. 17 ; Purgatorio, xxvii. 97-108. 



252 THE HIBBERT JOURNAL 

A W V [i.e. Dr A. W. Verrall] has not yet seen. Tell him to look at 
it again it is the passage about the pillar and the thong the pillar 
at the foot of wh, lay the dead children. Tell your husband to read 
that again not to mind the mythology but to see another point \vh. 
will please him. 

I have long wanted to say this but the words were never there now all 
the words are there and I think I have made the meaning clear ask 
elsewhere for the BOUND HERCULES. 



Auo/t/,evos is the sequel. 
Binding and loosing Bfa-p.oi.a-L AVTOIS 

not adamantine fetters but fetters that link and loose. Something about 
snapping his bonds in sunder. Tell AWV he will understand. 

Mrs Verrall s Script of 25th March. 

Claviger the bearer of the Key and Club 
clavem gerens trans Pontem 




trans Hellespontem et insuper mare 

ad urbem antea Byzantineam postea de ipsius nomine nominatam. 

The Club and Key East and West, look for the Eastern sign of the 
Club ex pede Herculem. 

The Hercules story comes in there and the clue is in the Euripides play 
if you could only see it. 

Bound to the pillar I told you before of Sebastian, it is the same story 
of the archer and the binding to the pillar. 

I want a special message to get to you. I have tried several times, but 
you have not understood. I dont know where it went wrong. But 
let Piddington know when you get a message about shadow, 
remember the Virgilian line indignantis [sic] sub umbras. To you 
they are shadows like the shadows in Plato's cave but they are 
shadows of the real. 

quae cum vides bene comprehendere possis quae tibi nunc fusco colors 
obdita paene obscurata videntur, et tamen in somniis aliquando 
UMBRARUM volitantia corpora percipis immo pro corporibus 
animas dicere melius quae tibi per somnum mentem immortalia 
tangunt 

The shadow of a shade. 

That is better umbrarum umbras, O-KIUS tlouXov was what I wanted to get 
written. Good-bye. 



RECENT PSYCHICAL RESEARCH 253 

A partial explanation of these curious rigmaroles will be 
| offered presently. For the moment, attention should be 
concentrated on two points about which there can be no 
mistake: (1) the mention of Euripides ; (2) the association 
of Euripides with one of his plays, the Hercules Furens. 
It is these which form Mrs Yen-all's contribution to the cross- 
correspondence we are now engaged upon ; and here again 
the words " ask elsewhere for the Bound Hercules " seem to 
indicate that a cross-correspondence was to be expected. 

Mrs Piper's contribution was not made until the 8th of 
April. On that day, when Myersp 1 was in the midst of 
an enumeration of words corresponding, as he claimed, to 
messages which he had given or was trying to give to Mrs 
Verrall, the following conversation took place with Mrs 
Sidgwick, who was in charge of the sitting : 



Myers P . Do you remember Euripides ? 

Mrs S. What is that ? " Euripides " ? 

Myers p. I meant to say Harold. 

Mrs S. " Harold"? 

Myers p. Yes, well. 

Mr* S. To whom did you say " Harold " ? 

Myersp. To Mrs V. 



There is some doubt as to what is intended by " Euripides 
... I meant to say Harold." The last words may mean that 
" Euripides " had been written in error for " Harold." But the 
error would be a strange one ; and it seems to me at least equally 
probable that what Myers P intended to say was that in addition 
to " Euripides " he had tried to give Mrs Verrall " Harold " 

1 The formula Myers P requires explanation. Most automatic writing takes 
the form of a communication ab extra ; but the scripts of the automatists who 
took part in the experiments described by Mr Piddington have the further 
peculiarity that they purport to be inspired by an identical group of spirit 
personalities. The protagonist among these claims to be F. W. H. Myers. 
Mr Piddington uses the symbols Myers P , Myers v , and Myers H to designate 
the Myers's influence as it is manifested in the script of Mrs Piper, Mrs Verrall, 
and Mrs Holland respectively. It is made quite clear, however, that this 
usage is only for convenience of description, and is not intended in any way to 
prejudge the answer that may eventually be given to questions concerning 
the real source and nature of the influence. 



254 THE HIBBERT JOURNAL 

also. In any case, it remains the fact that Mrs Piper's script 
of the 8th of April mentions " Euripides," and immediately 
afterwards " Harold." 

Mrs Holland's script of the 16th of April contains a 
passage which corresponds both to Mrs Verrall's of the 4th 
and of the 25th of March, and to Mrs Piper's of the 8th of 

April. 

Leopold. Lucus. 

Margaret. 

To fly to find Euripides. Philemon 

I want you to understand me, but I have so few chances to speak it's 
like waiting to take a ticket and I am always pushed away from the pigeon- 
hole before I can influence her mind No, the scribe's A peck of pickled 
pepper. 

Students of Browning will at once see in " Lucus [Lukos] 
to fly to find Euripides Philemon " allusions to Aristophanes' 
Apology, in which a translation of the Hercules Fur ens is 
incorporated. The mention of "Margaret" (Mrs Verrall's 
Christian name) in the middle of these allusions still further 
serves as a connecting link with Mrs Verrall's script, just as 
that of " Leopold " serves as a connecting link with Mrs 
Piper's script. For " Leopold " and " Harold " are the names 
of Frederic Myers's two sons. Miss Johnson (so Mr Piddington 
informs us) has no doubt that " a peck of pickled pepper " is a 
punning allusion to Mrs Piper. It is difficult to express any 
opinion on this without having more of Mrs Holland's script 
before us. Whether Miss Johnson's interpretation be well 
founded or not, the cross-correspondence is sufficiently striking 
without it. All three automatists mention Euripides by name. 
All three indicate more or less clearly that " Euripides " is the 
subject of a cross-correspondence. Two out of the three con- 
nect Euripides with the Hercules Furens, though the connec- 
tion is differently brought out by each. Two out of the three 
couple the mention of Euripides with the name of one of 
Frederic Myers's two sons, Harold and Leopold. 

3. In both the cases already described it is Mrs Holland's 
script which forms a kind of middle term between Mrs Verrall's 
and Mrs Piper's. In the third, the middle term is provided by 



RECENT PSYCHICAL RESEARCH 255 

Mrs Verrall. It must be added that the third case is more 
disputable, because more fanciful, than either of the other two. 
Nevertheless I am inclined to think that Mr Piddington's inter- 
pretation of it as a triple cross-correspondence is probably, 
though not certainly, correct. 

The relevant passage in Mrs Verrall's script has been 
already quoted. It forms the second part of the " Euripides " 
script of the 25th of March, beginning with the words, " I want 
a special message to get to you." Reiteration of words or ideas 
intended to be significant is a very common feature of Mrs 
Verrall's automatic writing. The significant idea in this 
particular passage is evidently that conveyed by " shadow " 
(repeated no less than five times), "shade," "shadow of a 
shade," " umbras," "umbrarum umbrae," cnaa? etSwXo^. All these 
words and phrases are capable of bearing both a literal and 
a metaphorical meaning : indeed, there seems to be a transition 
the script from one to the other from the " shadow " which 
rkness to the " shade " which is the ghost or phantasm of 
e dead. The insistence with which the idea is repeated is 
sufficient of itself to suggest that a cross-correspondence may be 
intended ; but the words " Let Piddington know when you get a 
message about shadow " seem to leave no doubt upon the point. 

Only two days later (i.e. on 27th March) Mrs Holland 
produced a script beginning " Birds in the high Hall Garden- 
not Maud Sylvia," in which the words, " tenebrae," " darkness," 
" light and shadow shadow and light " occur within the space 
of a few lines. It will be observed that in Mrs Verrall's 
script "shadow" appears (1) in its literal sense as implying 
darkness, (2) in its metaphorical sense as equivalent to 
"phantom." Mrs Holland's script gives it in its literal 
sense only. To complete the cross-correspondence artistically, 

hantom" or some analogous word should appear in Mrs 
Piper's script. It is interesting therefore to find that on 
the 8th of April, at the very same sitting which produced 
both "Light in West" and " Euripides Harold," Myers P 
does actually claim to have given " spirit " to Mrs Verrall. 




256 THE HIBBERT JOURNAL 

As I have already said, the cross-correspondence thus 
arrived at is very distinctly weaker and less convincing than 
the two former ones. On the whole, however, I believe it to 
be genuine (i.e. not accidental) ; and an examination, which 
we have still to undertake, into the relation of the three cross- 
correspondences to one another will be found, I think, to 
support the belief. 

At first sight there might seem to be nothing to connect 
any of the three with any other, unless the opening passage of 
Mrs Holland's script of 27th March, " Birds in the high Hall 
Garden not Maud Sylvia," be held to provide such a connec- 
tion. For the reference to Maud gives a point of contact 
between " East and West " and " shadow " ; and the mention of 
" Sylvia " (Silvia is the name of Frederic Myers's only daughter) 
gives a point of contact with " Euripides." 

A much more intimate connection, however, is revealed by 
a careful study of Mrs Yen-all's two " Euripides " scripts of 
the 4th and the 25th of March, especially the latter. 

The first part of the script of the 25th of March seems to 
identify Hercules with Janus through their common epithet 
daviger, which means "key-bearer" as well as "club-bearer." 
In the bearer of the club and key the union of the East and 
West is typified. And as Hercules, the world-wide wanderer, 
may be said, like Xerxes, to have bridged the Hellespont, which 
divides East from West, so also he may be compared to the God 
of the twin countenance, who embraces in one single gaze Eoas 
paries Hesperiasque sitnul. 1 

Again, when the second half of the script of the 25th of 
March is read in the light of the script of the 4th of March, there 
emerges a direct association between the cr/aas etSaAov in which 
the former culminates and the individual " shade " of Heracles 
himself. For Mrs Verrall, whose contemporaneous notes are 
often the best interpreters of her own script, records at the 
time that the reference in the script of 4th March to the 
Hercules Unbound ('Hpa/cX^s Xvo/xei/o?) reminded her of a 

1 Ovid, Fasti, i. 140. 



RECENT PSYCHICAL RESEARCH 257 

rpassage in Plotinus of which a translation is given in Myers's 

\Human Personality : " ' As the soul hasteneth,' " says Plotinus, 

l"'to the things that are above, she will ever forget the more ; 

| unless all her life on earth leave a memory of things done 

well. For even here may man do well if he stand clear of 

| the cares of earth. And he must stand clear of their memories 

I too ; so that one may rightly speak of a noble soul forgetting 

those things that are behind. And the shade of Heracles, 1 

'indeed, may talk of his own valour to the shades, but the 

I true Heracles in the true world will deem all that of little 

I worth ; being transported into a more sacred place, and 

I strenuously engaging, even above his strength, in those battles 

I in which the wise engage.' " 

If this interpretation be accepted and we are to see in 
I the " Unbound " Heracles of the script the " true " Heracles 
j of Plotinus, the cross- correspondences summed up in the 
words East and West, Euripides, and shadow, must them- 
selves be regarded as parts of a still more elaborate cross- 
correspondence, in which the first and third are brought 
into direct relation with the second, and so into indirect 
relation with each other. Mr Piddington believes them 
to be the starting-points of yet wider ramifications, and in 
supporting his argument shows much subtlety and acumen, 
though perhaps also a tendency to over-refining. Into this 
field, however, I will not attempt to follow him : what has 
already been given should suffice to serve its immediate 

rpose, which is that of illustration merely. 
I will now state very shortly the provisional conclusions 
cannot yet call them fully considered opinions which a first 
study of Mr Piddington's report has led me to form. 

1. The cross-correspondences presented by the different 
scripts are too numerous and too close to be the result of mere 
chance. 

2. They could, of course, be explained on the hypothesis of 

1 The allusion to the shade of Heracles in this passage is itself a 
dniscence of Odyssey, xi. 601-3. 
VOL. VII. No. 2, 17 



258 THE HIBBERT JOURNAL 

collusion. Nor do I think that this hypothesis can be absol- 
utely disproved. By many it will no doubt be accepted with 
all its difficulties in preference to conclusions repugnant to their 
settled preconceptions. But if it cannot be disproved, it may 
be disbelieved ; and personally I disbelieve it. 1 do so partly 
on grounds of internal evidence, partly because my knowledge 
of several of the individuals concerned forbids me to think 
them capable of engaging in a carefully prepared and long- 
sustained conspiracy to deceive. This, and nothing short of 
this, is involved if the phenomena are to be accounted for by 
collusion. The trickeries and frauds only too often practised 
by paid mediums at seances seem to me to stand on quite a 
different footing. 

3. If we exclude accidental coincidence and reject collusion, 
no explanation seems possible which does not in some shape 
or other presuppose telepathy. 

4. In some of the cross-correspondences, though not in all, the 
" complementary " character is sufficiently developed to make 
design and purposive action a probable inference, even if that in- 
ference had no foundation other than peculiarities of form alone. 

5. The argument in favour of design is, however, immensely 
strengthened by the circumstance that in many, perhaps in 
most, of the successful cases an intimation is given in one script 
that the subject of the cross- correspondence will be found in 
another. In Mrs Piper's script the intimation usually takes the 
form of a distinct claim that such and such a word or combina- 
tion of words has actually been given, or a statement that an 
attempt is being or will be made to give it, to Mrs Verrall. 1 
In the case of Mrs Verrall and Mrs Holland the intimation is 
in general much less explicit, and often absent altogether. 

6. If the exhibition of purpose and design be an admitted 
feature in the phenomena, a mere blind and haphazard tele- 
pathic rapport between the persons concerned in the experi- 

1 I do not recall at the moment any claim on the part of Mrs Piper's 
trance-personalities to have successfully conveyed a message to Mrs Holland. 
There is one rather doubtful case of such a claim with reference to Miss Verrall. 



RECENT PSYCHICAL RESEARCH 259 

ments is not sufficient to account for them. Directing intelli- 
gence must come in somewhere, whether it be manifested in 
conveying appropriate ideas to other minds, or in extracting ap- 
propriate ideas from other minds, or in turning ideas acquired, 
whether actively or passively, from other minds to appropriate use. 

7. The above considerations, if sound, do a good deal to 
narrow the area of the problem. The question now takes this 
form : To what mind is the directing influence to be traced ? 
Two alternative answers suggest themselves : It may proceed 
from the mind of one or more of the persons concerned in 
the experiment; or, it may have its origin in some source 
wholly external to any of them. 

8. If we could eliminate the first alternative, and thereby 
establish the second, something approaching aprimafacie case 
would have been made out for accepting the account which 
the directing influence gives of itself, namely, that it proceeds 
from the surviving spirits of certain individuals who "have 
passed through the body and gone" always provided this 
explanation is not ruled out ab initio. So long as the bare 
possibility of communications from the dead is treated as an 
open question, it would savour of paradox, in the case of a 
cross-correspondence admitted to be due to the purposive 
action of some intelligence external to the living persons 
immediately concerned in it, to attribute that action to an 
absolutely unknown x rather than to the source from which it 
actually purports to come. 

9. Unfortunately, evidence that would exclude directive 
agency on the part of the automatists is very difficult to get. 1 

1 The difficulty, great in any case, is further increased by the conversa- 
tional method characteristic of the Piper script. The advantages which this 
method offers in the devising and carrying out of experiments are obvious ; 
the drawback is that the experimenter in charge, and the sitter, if any, may 
easily become important factors in the result. This is, perhaps, less felt in the 
case of cross-correspondences than in that of other "psychical" phenomena. 
Some of Mrs Piper's most successful " hits " outside of cross-correspondences 
are strongly suggestive of ordinary thought-transference from those present. 
I should be inclined to put the Plotinus and Abt Fogler incidents both in this 
class. See Mr Piddington's report, pp. 59 and 107. 



260 THE HIBBERT JOURNAL 

It may, indeed, be conceded that intelligent action directed 
towards an end must be conscious action ; and further, that we 
may have good ground for believing (as I think we have in 
the present instance) that the automatists are genuinely uncon- 
scious of any action taken by them of a nature to produce a 
given cross-correspondence. But this is not sufficient. The 
phenomena of automatic writing, like those of hypnotism, 
seem to point to what is sometimes described as " dissociation 
of the personality," whereby an element of the normal self 
may be supposed to become in a lesser or greater degree 
divided off from that self and to acquire for the time being 
a certain measure of independence. It would appear to be 
with this secondary self (or selves, if there be more than one 
of them) that we have to reckon in dealing with the facts of 
automatism, rather than with the normal self ; and deductions 
drawn from the consciousness or unconsciousness of the latter 
may be altogether inapplicable to the former. How ready these 
secondary selves are to act a part, and how cleverly they often 
do so, the experience of hypnotism is there to show. 

10. I have now indicated the two rival hypotheses that 
seem to me on the whole to afford the most probable explana- 
tions of the phenomena of cross -correspondences. One of these 
attributes the production of the cross-correspondences to the 
directive agency of the secondary self of one of the automatists 
(or it may be the secondary selves of more than one co-oper- 
ating together). According to the other, these secondary selves 
are passive instruments played upon by intelligences external to 
them, which there is some prima facie ground for accepting as 
what they represent themselves to be, namely, spirits yet living 
that once were human beings in the flesh. I am well aware 
that to many people both these hypotheses will appear utterly 
fantastic and impossible. To me, both seem possible, and 
neither proved. But I do not see how any number of cross- 
correspondences, as such, will help us to decide between them. 

G. W. BALFOUR. 



NEW FACTS ON OUR SURVIVAL 
OF DEATH. 

JOHN W. GRAHAM, M.A., 

Principal of Dalton Hall, University of Manchester. 

IT is generally known that thirty years ago Frederic 
W. H. Myers, one of the greatest men of our generation, 
combining as he did extraordinary faculty as a man of letters 
and a man of science with high academic standing and 
strong spiritual intuition, determined to devote the rest of 
his life to the investigation of a group of phenomena of 
which no scientific explanation had yet been found. He 
found in Edmund Gurney a colleague of singular like-minded- 
ness, extensive leisure, and good literary and scientific powers, 
and on the initiative of Professor Barrett of Dublin, the 
Society for Psychical Research was launched in 1881. Dr 
Richard Hodgson, an acute and sceptical thinker, who was at 
that time an expert in Herbert Spencer's philosophy and a 
man of much practical wit, shortly joined the band, and it has 
worked on under the constant play of showers of sceptical 
criticism from Mrs Sidgwick and Mr F. Podmore. It has 
issued twenty -two volumes of Proceedings and thirteen volumes 
of Journal, and there have been produced the great work 
Phantasms of the Living and the still greater work of 
F. W. H. Myers, published after his death under the title of 
Human Personality. Other subsidiary literature has flowed 
from other pens. Then in succession came the deaths of 
Gurney, Sidgwick, Myers, and Hodgson. But this is a work 

261 



262 THE HIBBERT JOURNAL 

which, if there is anything in it, may perhaps be carried on from 
both sides of the chasm of death ; and for the past five years, 
amid many bogus imitations, there appears to have come a 
stream of communication from the departed leaders, which I 
venture to claim has now reached evidential force and volume. 
Communications have to pass through a medium's hand or 
voice ; she has to write or to speak ; how are we to know that 
the communication does not come from some subliminal part of 
herself, or by thought transference from someone else on earth ? 
If it be accepted, as it is accepted, that the subliminal self of each 
of us may carry on communication with the subliminal self of 
another without our knowledge or the other's knowledge, and 
that anything that is in anyone else's mind may conceivably, by 
stretching improbabilities, be thus transferred to the medium's 
mind, it will be seen how difficult it is to choose material 
which will be evidence of a communication from the departed. 
Myers and his friends recommended when they were here that 
we should all write in a sealed envelope some word, or fact, or 
allusion, which we should leave behind us in the hands of a 
trusted friend, hoping that if we were able to tell the contents 
of the envelope from the other side before the envelope itself 
was opened, that would constitute a proof of our survival. 
But it appears as though accidental, merely superficial know- 
ledge of that kind rarely survives into the memory of the next 
life, and no such experiment has yet been successful except a 
remote one in America many years ago. Myers, therefore, the 
initiator as ever of new work, conceived the idea about two 
years after his death that is at least what purports to have 
happened that he would try to give through two or more 
different mediums communications which make no sense in 
isolation, but which dovetail into one another and show an 
independent mind behind them both ; the communications to 
the two or more mediums being so different that it would be 
plain that telepathy had not taken place between them. The 
mediums used have been Mrs Piper, the experienced lady 
who has worked so long with Dr Hodgson at Boston, and 



NEW FACTS 263 

whose communications have already given such strong evidence 
of survival as to convince most of those who have studied them ; 
Mrs Verrall, the wife of Dr Verrall of Cambridge, her daughter 
Miss Verrall, Mrs Thompson, and the Anglo-Indian lady who 
goes under the name of Mrs Holland. Three Parts of the 
Proceedings, dealing chiefly with the script of Mrs Verrall, 
Mrs Holland, and Mrs Piper respectively, have been published 
[ Parts liii., lv., and Ivii.). It is almost impossible to give in a 

>rief form an intelligible account of experiments which are so 
>mplicated and which depend upon detail for their value, but 
will here attempt a summary of one from Part Ivii. edited 

>y Mr Piddington which I will call 

CALM IN TENNYSON AND PLOTINUS. 

On the 29th of January 1907, Mrs Verrall propounded to 
ie Myers of the Piper trance a test question, which had been 
carefully selected so as to be wholly meaningless to Mrs Piper 
herself, and to suggest matter which was so familiar to 
Frederic Myers in his life, and had entered so fully into his 
habitual thoughts, that there was good hope of his recollecting 
it. On account of the difficulty of getting questions through 
the well-intentioned but rather ill-educated amanuensis called 
" Rector," who appears to work Mrs Piper's hand, the question 
had to be very short ; and in order to avoid the chance of lucky 
guesses, and to make the result comfortably certain, this short 
question was to be such as would have large allusiveness, and 
might open up many recollections in the mind of Myers. It 
was thought also that if the question bore some kind of affinity 
to a subject already touched by Myers, though an affinity 
unrecognisable by the medium, there would be still more hope 
that his mind would again travel on that path. It was also 
necessary that the result should be verifiable, and riot dependent 
upon Mrs Verrall's or upon anyone else's impressions. These 
conditions appeared to be all fulfilled by the three Greek words 
avros ovpcwos aKVfjbojv (" the very heavens without a wave "), 
which were painfully spelt out, frequently repeated so as to be 



264 THE HIBBERT JOURNAL 

transmitted correctly, and plainly caught by Myers on the 
above date. 

These words are from the Enneades of Plotinus, and are 
part of a description of the circumstances which accompany 
and condition ecstasy ; that is, the condition in which the soul 
is sufficiently separated from the body, or from the bodily 
interests, to be in such close communion with the divine as to 
receive visions in rapt contemplation. The last of the three 
words is a rare one, not known even to Mr Piddington, 
still less, of course, to the absolutely Greekless minds of 
Mrs Piper and of " Rector." 

Now for the connection of the words with F. W. H. Myers. 

In his treatment of Ecstasy in Human Personality (Epilogue, 

vol. ii. p. 291), he quotes the paragraph in which they occur, 

not in Greek but in English. He translates the sentence 

containing them " Calm be the earth, the sea, the air, and 

let Heaven itself be still." Moreover, the actual Greek words 

are used by Myers as the motto to his poem on Tennyson, 

which is printed in Fragments of Prose and Poetry (p. 117). 

These words, which state that clear outward calm in nature is 

propitious to the trance condition of ecstasy, were pretty sure 

to have been often pondered by Myers in writing his careful 

inquiry into the experience of ecstasy an inquiry, it is safe 

to say, more scientific, more wide in its outlook, alike more 

penetrating and more comprehensive, than any preceding 

treatment of the phenomenon. It was therefore reasonable to 

expect that Myers would still be able to translate the words 

and to quote illustrative allusions to its subject matter from 

Tennyson and from Plotinus, and possibly from his own 

works. It was not yet seen by any of the experimenters how 

closely connected were Tennyson and Plotinus in the mind of 

Myers, and probably also in the mind of Tennyson himself; 

and how deeply appropriate it was that that motto from 

Plotinus should be placed at the head of a poem on Tennyson. 

The words out of that poem to which the motto is appropriate 

are these : 



NEW FACTS 265 

Once more he rises ; lulled and still, 

Hushed to his tune the tideways roll ; 
These waveless heights of evening thrill 

With voyage of the summoned Soul. 

The allusion is, of course, to Tennyson's Crossing the Bar ; 
they are indeed little but a paraphrase of that lovely lyric : 

And may there be no moaning of the bar, 
When I put out to sea, 

But such a tide as moving seems asleep, 

Too full for sound and foam, 

When that which drew from out the boundless deep 
Turns again home. 

r e have therefore to do with the idea of calm, particularly 

a preliminary to spiritual exaltation ; calm of nature as 
mducive to calm of spirit ; and we shall expect, if the experi- 
ment be successful, allusions to that idea in Tennyson, and 
reference to Plotinus. 

It was carefully discovered that Mrs Piper had never seen 
the volume, Fragments of Prose and Poetry, and even if she 
had read the English rendering of the words in Human 
Personality, it would not convey the Greek. 

A previous connection with the words " halcyon days " in 
Mrs Yen-all's script was, as was intended, remote and unrecog- 
nisable. Let it be remembered that we have to do in this 
investigation with the operation of a mind which appears to 
dream, and to bring out of its treasures unexpected allusions, 
glimmering attempts at a central idea, which it apparently 
takes time and effort for the speaker to make clear, and then 
to pass through an ill-made machine. It is something like 
writing a letter in the dark, which you hand to a sleepy post- 
man, who will carry it through an unknown land, past 
ancient block-houses of prohibitive tariffs and along unsealed 
passes, to a temporary and movable address ; and the responses 
are brought by dictation to an illiterate scribe, who does not 
always know the meaning of what he writes. 

We shall not, therefore, be surprised that the first answers 
to the test question were glimmering approaches to it only. 



266 THE HIBBERT JOURNAL 

The day that the question was propounded, Myers, through 
Mrs Piper, alluded to a " haven of rest," which he connected 
with a low armchair in Mrs Verrall's house, and to " celestial 
halcyon days," both of which he claimed to have referred to 
in her earlier script since he left this life. This was, on the 
whole, a well-founded claim, and it was doubtless made because 
Mrs Verrall had told him that the answer to her question would 
have some slight connection with something previously given. 
We thus see him on the right track, having apparently caught 
the idea of calm. He went on to speak of " larches " and 
" laburnum." A dreamer who was dreaming of Tennyson in 
connection with the word " halcyon " might easily pass on to 
the verse : 

When rosy plumelets tuft the larch, 
And rarely pipes the mounted thrush ; 
Or underneath the barren bush 

Flits by the sea-blue bird of March. 

For the " sea-blue bird of March " is the kingfisher or halcyon. 
Just at the end of the sitting, however, all that could be 
expressed was the word " larches," and that led on to another 
nature reminiscence from In Memoriam : " laburnums dropping 
wells of fire." All this would deserve the name of fanciful 
if it stood alone ; but we will proceed. 

We now turn to Mrs Verrall's script, which on the 12th 
of February ran thus : 

The voyage of Maeldune faery lands forlorn and noises of the western sea 

thundering noises of the western sea. 
It is about Merlin and Arthur's realm Merlin's prophetic vision "all 

night long mid thundering noises of the western sea " and how he 

would not go the passing of Arthur. 
And then the island valley of Avilion where blows not any wind nor ever 

falls the least light no not that but you have the sense there falls 

no rain nor snow nor any breath of wind shakes the least leaf. 
I will try to get the idea elsewhere conveyed but it is hard and I know 

I have failed before. Why will you not put the signature ? Surely 

you know now that it is not you. FWHM. 

Here we have more Tennysonian calm with the island 
valley of Avilion, which he could not manage to quote quite 



NEW FACTS 267 

correctly. The words near the end, " Why will you not 
put the signature? Surely you know now that it is not 
you. FWHM," appear to be remarks which have leaked 
through, addressed by Myers to Mrs Verrall as medium. 

The Keats quotation " faery lands forlorn," is also used as 
itle of a poem by Myers published in his Fragments, and in 
iat poem are references to " that heaven-high vault serene," 
id " unearthly calms." He is thus giving a clear allusion from 
lis own words to the idea required of him. Myers's poem 
>eaks of a voyage north from Aalesund to " Isles unnamed 
gulfs unvoyaged," just as does the Voyage of Maeldune. 

We have, therefore, here an allusion than which few could 
tave been more characteristic of Myers and more appropriate 
the idea he was desired to convey. 
On the 25th of February Mrs VerralTs hand wrote : 

I stretch my hand across the vapourous space, the interlunar space twixt 
moon and earth where the gods of Lucretius quaff their nectar. 
Do you not understand ? 

The lucid interspace of world and world Well, that is bridged by the 
thought of a friend, bridged before for your passage, but to-day for 
the passage of any that will walk it, not in hope but in faith. 

[ere is an allusion to the Lucretius of Tennyson, to a passage 
lescriptive altogether of calm contemplation and such com- 
mnion as is possible to men : 

The Gods, who haunt 
The lucid interspace of world and world, 
Where never creeps a cloud, or moves a wind, 
Nor ever falls the least white star of snow, 
Nor ever lowest roll of thunder moans, 
Nor sound of human sorrow mounts to mar 
Their sacred everlasting calm ! And such, 
Not all so fine, nor so divine a calm, 
Not such nor all unlike it, man may gain 
Letting his own life go. 

the next day we have, through Mrs Verrall's hand, 
the first reference to the three Greek words connected with 

Crossing the Bar : 

I think I have made him [probably "Rector"] understand, but the 
best reference to it will be made elsewhere, not Mrs Piper at all. 



268 THE HIBBERT JOURNAL 

I think I have got some words from the poem written down if not 

stars and satellites, another phrase will do as well. And may there 

be no moaning at the bar my Pilot face to face. 
The last poems of Tennyson and Browning should be compared. There 

are references in her writing to both Helen's, I mean. 
The fighter fights one last fight, but there is peace for him too in the end 

and peace for the seer who knew that after after the earthquake, 

and the fire and the wind, after, after, in the stillness comes the voice 

that can be heard. 

Here we have the first clear allusion to the connection 
between the motto from Plotinus and the poem Crossing the 
Bar, to which it alluded in Myers' poem on Tennyson. He 
evidently feels the difficulty of communication, and adds that 
though he cannot get the allusion " sunset and evening star," 
he does get part of the lines about "the pilot" and the 
" moaning at the bar." He then alludes to the well-worn 
comparison of this last poem of Tennyson's with Browning's 
valediction to life : 

" Strive and thrive ! " cry " Speed, fight on, face ever 
There as here." 

The appropriateness of the comparison of Tennyson the seer, 
to Browning the fighter, is plain ; and finally, we have the 
allusion to the " still small voice " heard by Elijah on Mount 
Horeb. 

On the 6th of March Mrs Verrall's hand wrote : 

I have tried to tell him of the calm, the heavenly and earthly calm, but I 
do not think it is clear. I think you would understand if you could 
see the record. Tell me when you have understood. 

Calm is the sea and in my heart, if calm at all, if any calm, a calm 
despair. 

That is only part of the answer just as it is not the final thought. 
The symphony does not close upon despair but on harmony. So 
does the poem. Wait for the last word. 

Here we have more allusions to the same thought, though 
Myers expresses doubt as to whether he has made " Rector " 
understand ; but he thinks that the record of the Piper 
trances will be plain to Mrs Verrall. He then runs in another 
quotation from In Memoriam, but corrects its final word, inas- 



NEW FACTS 269 

much as the conclusion of that poem is hope and not despair. 
He put his special signature to this bit of script. 

Then on the llth of March we have a beautiful passage 
written by Mrs Yen-all's hand, dwelling on the fact that both 
Plato and Tennyson had communion with the unseen : 

Violet and olive leaf purple and hoary. 

The city of the violet and olive crown. 

News will come of her. Of Athens 

The shadow of the Parthenon. It is a message from Plato that I want to 

send. It has been given elsewhere, but should be completed here. 

It is about dim, seen forms, half seen in the evenings grey by a boy 

and afterwards woven into words that last I want to say it again. 

I think there is a verse in Tennyson about it. 
Plato and the shadow and the unseen or half-seen companionship shapes 

seen in the glimpses of the moonlit heights. 
To walk with Plato (or some phrase like that), with voiceless communing, 

and unseen Presence felt. (No, you don't get it right.) Presences 

on the eternal hills (that is better). The Presence that is on the 

lonely hills. (That is all for now. Wait.) 

This script is an allusion to Frederic Myers's poem on The 
Collected Works of G. F. Watts :- 

Then as he walked, like one who dreamed, 

Through silent highways silver-hoar, 
More wonderful that city seemed, 

And he diviner than before : 
A voice was calling, " All is well " ; 

Clear in the vault Selene shone, 
And over Plato's homestead fell 

The shadow of the Parthenon. 

For purposes of mere evidence it is enough to say that 
Tennyson and Plotinus, who were plainly connected in the 
mind of Frederic Myers, were also connected in the script ; 
and any reader who feels that he would like to keep his mind 
closely bent upon the thread of evidence, will do well to skip 
the following paragraphs. It is in itself, however, a deeply 
interesting quest to point out how the great mystics in all 
ages speak the same tongue. 

It is well known that Tennyson was all his life subject to 
periods of trance, which he could sometimes produce by the 
device of repeating his own name over and over; he was 



270 THE HIBBERT JOURNAL 

" wound into the great Soul," had the sensation of leaving his 
body and living in a larger air, a consciousness of exalted 
happiness and communion, at once broken by any interruption, 
or even by his own hand suddenly touching the table. He 
gives an account of this experience in In Memoriam, stanza 
xcv., in The Ancient Sage, and in Arthur's speech at the 
conclusion of the Holy Grail, and it is referred to pretty fully 
in his son's Memoir. 

With regard to the particular point of the desirability of 
external calm to induce ecstasy, Mrs Verrall has noted that 
before the trance described in In Memoriam, xcv., there was 

Calm that let the tapers burn 
Unwavering : not a cricket chirred ; 
The brook alone far off was heard, 
And on the board the ff uttering urn, 

and that the vision " was stricken through with doubt " in the 
sudden breeze of dawn. Mrs Verrall also points out that there 
are some interesting verbal parallels between In Memoriam 
and Plotinus, who speaks of the " illuminating entry of the 
soul bringing a golden vision." Tennyson speaks of " the 
spirits' golden day." " Ionian " occurs in both writers, and 
both speak of " That which is " as compared with the present, 
past, and future ideas appropriate to time, which is a mere 
image of eternity. It is known also that Arthur Hallam, the 
subject of In Memoiiam, was a student of Plotinus. 

We will now turn to Mrs Piper's trance, which we left on 
the 30th of January, giving then its first hints of a solution to 
the question which had been propounded to those who write 
through her hand the day before. 

On the 6th of March there were written by her hand the 
three words, " Cloudless Sky Horizon. Don't you under- 
stand ? " and immediately afterwards the sentence : " A cloud- 
less sky beyond the horizon." This is a paraphrase of the three 
Greek test- words. Mrs Piper's trance concludes with a waking 
stage, in which, after the writing has ceased, she utters all kinds 
of disconnected sentences, during the time when her personality 



NEW FACTS 271 

is resuming control, or, as Myers put it, through her hand, 
" When the spirit is returning to this light." The things said 
at this time are probably partly Mrs Piper's own and partly 
from the same source as her script ; they are often faint, and 

Konly be caught by putting the ear close to her mouth. 
When she was thus recovering after this sitting, she 
I, " Moaning at the bar when I put out to sea." Shortly 
alter she uttered " Arthur Hallam " twice, and " Good-bye, 
Margaret " (the Christian name of Mrs Verrall, who, however, 
was not present). She then said for the third time, " Arthur 
Hallam. Myers said it was he. He says that he will give 
evidence, and he is glad to know that he had a good definite 
idea in his innermost soul. He said it affected his innermost 
soul to talk to you, and he was so glad." 

Then, a week later, at the next sitting, Myers, through 
Mrs Piper, attempted to draw roughly what was said to 
represent a bar in fact, three attempts at drawing it were 
made altogether. He claimed that he had spoken of " crossing 
the bar" to Mrs Verrall also, which was quite true, though 
at that time unknown to Mr Piddington, the experimenter. 
Myers also declared that he had tried to draw a bar with 
Mrs Verrall, adding, " I thought she might get a glimpse of 
my understanding of her Greek." Then Hodgson appeared 
and asked whether Mrs Verrall had drawn a bar. Myers 
also came and asked the same question. As a fact, this drawing 
had not succeeded, though Mrs Verrall had written, " May 
there be no moaning at the bar." Myers replied that he was 
not sure that he had succeeded in giving her the full im- 
pression, but that he had quoted the words to her as well as 
to Mrs Piper. He added that he had given to Mrs Piper 
both the words " Arthur Hallam " and the drawing of the 
bar " so as to get the words with the author's individuality." 

These references to Hallam and Crossing the Bar occurred 
in Mrs Piper's trance before Mrs Verrall had grasped the 
significance of the appearances in her script of the Tennysonian 
quotations. She did not see the point till six days later; 



272 THE HIBBERT JOURNAL 

and the paraphrase, " cloudless sky beyond the horizon," does 
not appear with Mrs Verrall at all, and could not have come 
from her. 

To sum up in the words of Mr Piddington : "It appears 
that in the absence of all intercourse between Mrs Piper and 
Mrs Verrall after 30th January, on the one hand, the * Myers ' 
of Mrs Verrall's script on 26th February and 6th March respec- 
tively, connected Crossing the Bar and In Memoriam with 
auros ovpavbs aKvpuv ; while, on the other hand, the ' Myers ' 
of Mrs Piper's trance on 6th March alluded to Crossing the 
Bar and mentioned the name * Arthur Hallam ' in close con- 
junction with Mrs Verrall's Christian name ; claimed on 13th 
March to have given to Mrs Verrall a quotation from Crossing 
the Bar, and further explained that he thought this reference 
would make Mrs Verrall understand in part what significance 
the Greek words had for him." 

The situation then was that, whilst abundant allusion to the 
Tennysonian connection with the three Greek words had been 
made, the passage in Human Personality where they are trans- 
lated, and the name of their author Plotinus, had not yet 
appeared. It was therefore thought better to see whether this 
field also would yield a harvest, and for that purpose Mrs 
Verrall sat with Mrs Piper on the 29th of April, and asked Myers 
if he could make allusion to some other group of associations, 
and also give the author's name. No clue was given to Myers 
to guide him as to which of his communications had been found 
to be answers to the question. 

This was a very confused sitting, possibly due to the 
newness of the experimenters and their difficulty in deciphering 
the script ; and to everyone's surprise allusions, evidently made 
with great difficulty, occurred to Swedenborg, to Dante, to 
St Paul, and to Francis of Assisi. References also occurred to 
" Azure a blue sky," and to " Halcyon days," both concordant 
with the central idea. Still this was not what was wanted. 

The next sitting produced even more unexpected results, 
inasmuch as Myers stated that the three Greek words reminded 



hi 



NEW FACTS 273 



him of " Homer's Illiard." This piece of illiteracy only shows 
how great are the mechanical difficulties in passing a word 
through. Without definitely giving the author's name, we have 
first an attempt to begin the word Plato, and then we have 
the word " Socratese." 

This was very confusing to all the experimenters, and 
med as though it might be nothing better than bad guessing ; 
e riddle was hard to read ; it was all the better riddle for 
at, nevertheless. Afterwards Mrs Verrall remembered that 
Human Personality, near the Plotinus passage wherein the 
three Greek words are translated, occurs an account of the 
famous vision of Socrates, described in the Crito of Plato, in 
which a fair and white-robed woman appeared to him in his 
prison, and quoted to him, as he waited for death, a line from 
the Iliad (ix. 363) " On the third day hence thou comest to 
Phthia's fertile shore." Socrates took this as a promise of im- 
mortality, whence came its fitting place in Human Personality. 
Further, the original Greek of this passage from the Crito 
is given as the motto to the Epilogue of Human Personality, 
in which the passage from Plotinus occurs. The experi- 
menters now felt that they understood the allusion to the 
Iliad, though neither the word " Iliad " nor the word " Homer " 
occurs in the text of Human Personality at that place. Surely 
no one but Myers could have made that allusion. As Mr 
Piddington says : "It would not, therefore, have been possible 
for anyone but a Greek scholar, familiar with Greek literature, 
to discover from these pages of Human Personality any con- 
nection between the vision of Socrates and Homer's Iliad, 
even if he had sufficient familiarity with these pages to be re- 
minded of the vision of Socrates by an allusion to the vision 
of Plotinus." 

In this chapter on Ecstasy in Human Personality we have 
the passage : "We need not deny the transcendental ecstasy 
to any of the strong souls who have claimed to feel it; 
to Elijah or to Isaiah, to Plato or to Plotinus, to St John 
or to St Paul, to Buddha or Mahomet, to Virgil or Dante, to 

VOL. VII. No. 2. 18 



274 THE HIBBERT JOURNAL 

St Theresa or to Joan of Arc, to Kant or to Swedenborg, to 
Wordsworth or to Tennyson." 

On the same page we find the passage : " Our daily bread 
is as symbolical as the furniture of Swedenborg's heavens and 
hells. . . . Plotinus, * the eagle soaring above the tomb of 
Plato,' is lost to sight in the heavens. . . . But the prosaic 
Swede his stiff mind prickly with dogma, the opaque cell walls 
of his intelligence flooded cloudily by the irradiant day this 
man, by the very limitations of his faculty, by the practical 
humility of a spirit trained to inquiry but not to generate 
truth, has awkwardly laid the corner stone, grotesquely sketched 
the elevation of a temple which our remotest posterity will be 
upbuilding and adorning still." 

In the Epilogue of Human Personality we find this signifi- 
cant passage : " I believe that some of those who once were 
near to us are already mounting swiftly upon this heavenly 
way. And when from that cloud encompassing of unforgetful 
souls some voice is heard, as long ago, there needs no 
heroism, no sanctity, to inspire the apostle's eVitfu/u'a efc TO 
cu/aXvcrcu, the desire to lift our anchor, and to sail out beyond 
the bar. What fitter summons for man than the wish to live 
in the memory of the highest soul that he has known, now 
risen higher to lift into an immortal security the yearning 
passion of his love ? ' As the soul hasteneth,' says Plotinus, 
' to the things that are above, she will ever forget the more ; 
unless all her life on earth leave a memory of things done 
well.'" 

Here in one paragraph we have Myers's deepest and most 
original thought, beginning with a quotation from the Apostle 
on whose inward experience he had based in earlier life his 
well-known mystical poem St Paul. Next comes an allusion 
to Crossing the Bar, and finally a passage from Plotinus ; all 
within a few lines. 

Without actually giving as yet the name of the author 
of the three Greek words, it may surely be said that the 
communications are full of Myers's rich and radiating person- 



L 

ki 



NEW FACTS 275 




ity, not easy to mistake for anyone else's by any who 
knew him. 

But we now come to the final achievement. On the 6th of 
May, Mrs Sidgwick, before she had asked a single question in 

e Piper trance, was met by the word "Plotinus," to be 
nsmitted with every sign of triumphant emphasis to Mrs 

errall. The atmosphere of the interview was like that after 
athletic contest in which victory had been won ; Myers 
congratulated himself on having fully answered the Greek as 
he had previously answered a certain important Latin question. 
He said that he had " caught " Rector at their last meeting, 
and had spelled it out to him clearly. 

That there are great difficulties to overcome in these trans- 
missions is what we should expect ; and that it actually is so 
is plain from the gradual process by which success arrives. 
As Mr Piddington acutely remarks, the first shots at the 
Tennysonian allusions in the words " larches " and " laburnum " 
indirect, only partial answers as they were were given on the 
day after the test question was put ; and when a new set of 
associations was demanded we had Homer's Iliad, Socrates, 
Swedenborg, St Paul, and Dante the dramatis personse, in 
fact, of the concluding chapters of Human Personality, before 
the awakening strands of earth memory gave forth the name 
Plotinus. 

By way of guarding against a telepathic origin for the 
messages from a mind still on earth, it may be noted that the 
whole range of thought and knowledge is alien from the circle 
of Mrs Piper's mind ; that Mr Piddington declares himself to 
have been wholly unaware of all the literary connections and 
allusions brought out, and wholly unable to assist the medium 
unconsciously in any way, and that Mrs Verrall the only 
other person concerned did not know or think of a large part 
of this complex of allusions, and did not even recognise them 
in the script until the 12th of March, which is after the Piper 
answers of 6th March had come. It is also hard to understand, 
if her subliminal mind is to be credited with both her own and 



276 THE HIBBERT JOURNAL 

Mrs Piper's script, why the name Plotinus, which must have 
been on the tip of her tongue of expectation all the time, was 
the last to be unearthed. The telepathic hypothesis will, I 
think, be found insufficient by anyone who reads the scripts. 
Mrs Verrall's mind is the only one on earth which needs 
consideration as a possible source of the knowledge displayed ; 
but it is not only knowledge that is displayed, but every token 
of a particular personality. There are conversations overheard 
between the communicators, their amanuensis, and their 
medium, either spoken during the waking stage of trance, or 
written by the hand. Moreover, we must remember that we 
can only properly regard the subliminal self, enlightening 
generalisation as it is of many phenomena, telepathic, hypnotic, 
and so forth, as an entity provisionally covering a good many 
facts, not as an actually defined organism, the bounds of whose 
faculties are even beginning to be known. There may be 
several subliminal selves, or it may be rather a link of 
connection with other potencies behind it than a great organ 
in itself. In any case, if all this is due to the operation of 
Mrs Verrall's underlying mind, it is entirely unique among 
our records. 

The narrative which 1 have attempted here to summarise, 
and which covers 65 pages of Proceedings, Part Ivii., is only 
one though one of the best of twenty-three cross - 
correspondences described in this volume, in addition to the 
eight which were described in Miss Johnson's paper on Mrs 
Holland in Part Iv. The care shown over minutiae by Mr 
Piddington, and the perfect candour of his exposition, win 
the reader's confidence ; his ingenuity in the tracking of 
allusions, and insight into the working of the fragmentary 
mental operations of the trance personalities, is nothing less 
than delightful to those who care for intellectual athletics and 
like to see a mark neatly hit. 

If the curious reader wants to know what news of our 
life hereafter is vouchsafed by this revelation, the best answer 
is to exhort to patience and to be cautious in statement. 



NEW FACTS 



277 



"Myers" and "Hodgson" declare that they are very much more 
alive than they were on earth, that they are not really dream- 
ing, that they would not desire to come back again, and that 
they are still, nevertheless, in possession of much at any rate 
>f the memories and attachments of earth ; they say that they 

re still almost as far as we are from the innermost Presence 

id Counsel of God, but they confirm the claims and sanctions 
>f the religious life. They state that a period of unconscious- 
icss, varying in length, supervenes upon death a period 
inusually prolonged in Myers's case ; and that after a few years 

-say half a dozen the spirit moves in its development too 
far from earth life to have any further communication with 
it. Doubtless there are numerous exceptions to this ; and we 

ither that Myers himself is voluntarily staying near us for 

ic sake of the service of our faith. 



JOHN W. GRAHAM. 



MANCHESTER. 



THE DOCTRINE OF THE EARTH-SOUL 
AND OF BEINGS INTERMEDIATE 
BETWEEN MAN AND GOD. 

AN ACCOUNT OF THE PHILOSOPHY OF 
G. T. FECHNER. 

PROFESSOR WILLIAM JAMES. 

FECHNER and Hegel are both pantheists, and in a sense 
Fechner writes himself down as an absolutist. But the 
methods and intellectual atmospheres of the two men are so 
different that it seems to mock every real ground of relation- 
ship to refer them to the same type. Hegel is the very 
paragon of a rationalist, Fechner the very paragon of an 
empiricist. If thinkers who go from parts towards wholes are 
ever to be convinced of an absolute spirit's existence, it can 
never be by the style of reasoning of Hegel or his disciples. 
It may be by Fechner's way of reasoning. Before giving my 
sketch of it, let me rehearse a few of the facts of Fechner's life. 
Born in 1801, son of a poor country pastor in Saxony, he 
lived from 1817 to 1887, when he died seventy years, therefore 
at Leipzig, a typical gelehrter of the old-fashioned German 
stripe. His means were always scanty, and his only extrava- 
gances could be in the way of thought, but they were gorgeous. 
He passed medical examinations at Leipzig University at the 
age of twenty-one, but decided, instead of becoming a doctor, to 
devote himself to physical science. It was ten years before he 
was made professor of physics, although he soon was authorised 

278 



THE EARTH-SOUL 279 

to lecture. Meanwhile, he had to make both ends meet, and 
this he did by voluminous literary labours. He translated, 
for example, Biot's treatise on Physics and Thenard's on 
Chemistry, four and six volumes respectively, with enlarged 
editions later. He edited repertories of chemistry and physics, 
a pharmaceutical journal, and an encyclopaedia in eight 
volumes, of which he wrote about one-third. He published 
>hysical treatises and experimental investigations of his own, 
jcially in electricity. Electrical measurements are the 
;is of the science, and Fechner's measurements in galvan- 
>m, performed with the simplest self-made apparatus, are 
jsic to this day. During this time he also published a 
lumber of half-philosophical, half-humorous writings, which 
lave gone through several editions, under the name of Dr 
[ises, as well as poems, literary and artistic essays, and other 
sasional articles. 

But overwork, poverty, and an eye trouble produced by his 
>bservations on after-images in the retina (also a classic piece 
investigation) produced in Fechner, then about thirty-eight 
rears old, a terrific attack of nervous prostration with painful 
lyperaesthesia of all the functions, from which he suffered 
:hree years, cut off entirely from active life. Present-day 
ledicine would have classed poor Fechner's malady quickly 
enough as partly a habit-neurosis ; but its severity was such 
iat in his day it was treated as a visitation incomprehensible 
its malignity ; and when he suddenly began to get well, both 
Fechner and others treated the recovery as a sort of divine 
miracle. This illness, bringing Fechner face to face with 
inner desperation, made a great crisis in his life. " Had I not 
then clung to the faith," he writes, "that clinging to faith 
would somehow or other work its reward, so hatte ich jene 
zeit nicht ausgehalten." His religious and cosmological faiths 
saved him thenceforward one great aim with him was to 
work out and communicate these faiths to the world. He did 
so on the largest scale ; but he did many other things too ere 
he died. 



280 THE H1BBERT JOURNAL 

A book on the atomic theory, classic also ; four elaborate 
mathematical and experimental volumes on what he called 
psychophysics many persons consider Fechner to have prac- 
tically founded scientific psychology in the first of these books ; 
a book on organic evolution ; two works on experimental 
aesthetics, in which again Fechner is considered by some 
judges to have laid the foundations of a new science, must be 
included among these other performances. Of the more 
religious and philosophical works I shall immediately give a 
further account. 

All Leipzig mourned him when he died, for he was the 
pattern of the ideal German scholar, as daringly original in 
his thought as he was homely in his life, a modest, genial, 
laborious slave to truth and learning, and withal the owner 
of an admirable literary style of the vernacular sort. The 
materialistic generation, that in the fifties and sixties called his 
speculations fantastic, had been replaced by one with greater 
liberty of imagination, and a Preyer, a Wundt, a Paulsen, and 
a Lasswitz could now speak of Fechner as their master. 

His mind was indeed one of those multitudinously 
organised cross-roads of truth, which are occupied only at 
rare intervals by children of men, and from which nothing is 
either too far or too near to be seen in due perspective. 
Patientest observation, exactest mathematics, shrewdest 
discrimination, humanest feeling flourished in him on the 
largest scale, with no apparent detriment to one another. 
He was, in fact, a philosopher in the " great " sense, although 
he cared so much less than most philosophers care for abstrac- 
tions of the " thin " order. For him the abstract lived in the 
concrete, and the hidden motive of all he did was to bring 
what he called the daylight view of this world into even 
greater evidence, that daylight view being this, that the whole 
universe in its different spans and wave-lengths, exclusions 
and envelopments, is everywhere alive and conscious. It has 
taken fifty years for his greatest book, Zend-Avesta, to 
pass into a second edition (1901). "One swallow," he cheer- 



THE EARTH-SOUL 281 

fully writes, "does not make a summer. But the first swallow 
would not come unless the summer were coming ; and for me 
that summer means my daylight view some time prevailing." 
The original sin, according to Fechner, of both our popular 

id our scientific thinking, is our inveterate habit of regarding 

ie spiritual, not as the rule, but as an exception in the midst 
Nature. Instead of believing our life to be fed at the 
breasts of the greater life, our individuality to be sustained 
by the greater individuality, which must necessarily have 
more consciousness and more independence than all that it 
brings forth, we treat whatever lies outside of our life as so 

tuch slag and ashes of life only ; or, if we believe in a Divine 
Jpirit, we fancy him on the one side as bodiless and Nature as 

>ulless on the other. What comfort, or peace, he asks, can 
come from such a doctrine ? The flowers wither at its breath, 
the stars turn into stone ; our own body grows unworthy of 
our spirit and sinks to a tenement for carnal senses only. The 
book of nature turns into a volume on mechanics, in which 
whatever lives is treated as a sort of anomaly ; a great chasm 
of separation yawns between us and whatever is higher than 
ourselves ; and God becomes a thin nest of abstractions. 

Fechner's great instrument for vivifying the daylight view 
is analogy ; not a rationalistic argument is to be found in 
all his many pages only reasonings like those which men 
continually use in practical life. For example : My house is 
built by someone ; the world too is built by someone. The 
world is greater than my house ; it must be a greater someone 
who built the world. My body moves by the influence of my 
feeling and will; the sun, moon, sea and wind, being them- 
selves more powerful, move by the influence of some more 
powerful feeling and will. I live now, and change from one 
day to another ; I shall live hereafter and change still more; etc. 
Bain defines genius as the power of seeing analogies. The 
number that Fechner could perceive was prodigious ; but he 
insisted on the differences as well. Neglect to make allowance 
for these, he said, is the common fallacy in analogical reasoning. 



282 THE HIBBERT JOURNAL 

Most of us, for example, reasoning justly that since all the 
minds we know are connected with bodies, therefore God's 
mind should be connected with a body, proceed to suppose 
that that body must be an animal body over again, and so 
paint an altogether human picture of God. But all that the 
analogy comports is a body the particular features of our 
body are adaptations to a habitat so different from God's 
that, if God have a physical body at all, it must be utterly 
different from ours in structure. Throughout his writings 
Fechner makes difference and analogy walk abreast, and by 
his extraordinary sense for both things converts what would 
ordinarily pass for objections to his conclusions into factors of 
their support. 

The vaster orders of mind go with the vaster orders of 
body. The entire earth on which we live must have, accord- 
ing to Fechner, its own collective consciousness. So must 
each sun, moon, and planet ; so must our solar system have 
its own wider consciousness, in which the consciousness of our 
earth plays one part. So has the entire starry system as such 
its consciousness ; and if that starry system be not the sum 
of all that is, materially considered, then that whole system, 
along with whatever else may be, is the body of that absolutely 
totalised consciousness of the universe to which men give the 
name of God. 

Speculatively, Fechner is thus a monist in his theology ; 
but there is room in his universe for every grade of spiritual 
being between man and the final all-inclusive God. In 
suggesting the positive content of all this super-humanity, 
however, he hardly lets his imagination fly beyond simple 
spirits of the planetary order. The earth-soul he passionately 
believes in ; he treats the earth as our special human guardian 
angel ; we can pray to the earth as men pray to their saints ; 
and I think that in his system, as in so many of the actual 
historic theologies, the supreme God only marks a sort of 
limit of enclosure of the world of the divine. He is left thin 
and abstract in his majesty, men preferring to carry on their 




THE EARTH-SOUL 283 

personal transactions with the many less remote and abstract 
messengers and mediators whom the divine order provides. 

I shall ask later whether the abstractly monistic turn which 
Fechner's speculations took was necessitated by logic. I 
believe it was not required. Meanwhile, let me proceed a 
little farther into the detail of his thought. Inevitably one does 
him miserable injustice by summarising and abridging him. 
r although the type of reasoning he employs is almost 
ildlike for simplicity, and his bare conclusions can be written 
n a single page, the power of the man is due altogether to the 
profuseness of his concrete imagination ; to the multitude of 
the points which he considers successively ; to the cumulative 
effect of his learning, of his ingenuity in detail, and of his 
thoroughness ; to his admirably homely style ; to the sincerity 
with which his pages glow ; and, finally, to the impression he 
gives of a man who doesn't live at second-hand, but who sees, 
who in fact speaks, as a prophet, and is wholly unlike one 
of the common herd of scientific and philosophic scribes. 

Abstractly set down, his most important conclusion for my 
purpose in the present article is that the constitution of the 
world is the same throughout. In ourselves, visual conscious- 
ness goes with our eyes, tactile consciousness with our skin. But 
although neither skin nor eye knows aught of the sensations 
of the other, they come together and figure in some sort of 
relation and combination in the more inclusive consciousness 
which each of us names his self. Quite similarly, then, says 
Fechner, we must suppose that my consciousness of myself 
and yours of yourself, although in their immediacy they 
keep entirely separate and know nothing of each other, are 
yet known and used together in a higher consciousness, that 
of the human race, say, into which they enter as constituent 
parts. Similarly the human and the animal kingdom at large 
are members of a collective consciousness of still higher grade. 
This combines with the consciousness of the vegetable king- 
dom, in the Soul of the Earth, which in turn contributes its 
share of experience to that of the whole solar system ; and so 



284 THE HIBBERT JOURNAL 

on from synthesis to synthesis, and from height to height, till 
an absolutely universal consciousness is reached. 

A vast analogical series, of which the basis consists of facts 
directly observable in ourselves. 

The supposition of an earth-consciousness meets a strong 
instinctive prejudice which Fechner ingeniously tries to over- 
come. Man is the highest consciousness upon the earth, we 
think the earth itself being in all ways his inferior. How 
should its consciousness, if it have one, be superior to his? 

What are the marks of superiority which we are tempted 
to use here ? If we look more carefully into them, Fechner 
points out that the earth possesses each and all of them 
more perfectly than we. He considers in detail the points 
of difference between us, and shows them all to make for 
the earth's higher rank. I will touch on only a few of these 
points. 

One of them, of course, is independence of other external 
beings. External to the earth are only the other heavenly 
bodies. All the things on which we externally depend for 
life air, water, plant- and animal-food, fellow-men, etc. are 
included in her as constituent parts. She is self-sufficing in 
a million respects in which we are not so. We depend on 
her for almost everything, she on us for but a small portion 
of her history. She swings us in her orbit from winter to 
summer, and revolves us from day into night and from night 
into day. 

Complexity in unity is another sign of superiority. The 
total earth's complexity far exceeds that of any organism, 
for she includes all our organisms in herself, along with an 
infinite number of things that our organisms fail to include. 
Yet how simple and massive are the phases of her own 
proper life 1 As the total bearing of any animal is sedate and 
tranquil compared with the agitation of its blood corpuscles, 
so is the earth a sedate and tranquil being compared with 
the animals whom she supports. 

To develop from within, instead of being fashioned from 



THE EARTH-SOUL 285 

without, is also counted as superior in men's eyes. An egg 
is a higher style of being than a piece of clay which an 
external modeller makes into the image of a bird. Well, the 
earth's history develops from within. It is like that of a 
wonderful egg which the sun's heat, like that of a mother 
hen, has stimulated to its cycles of evolutionary change. 

Individuality of type, and difference from other beings of 
its type, is another mark of rank. The earth differs from 
every other planet, and the class of planetary beings is 
extraordinarily distinct. 

Long ago the earth was called an animal, but a planet 
a higher class of being than either man or animal ; not 
[y quantitatively greater, like a vaster and more awkward 
hale or elephant, but a being whose enormous size requires 
an altogether different plan of life. Our animal organisation 
comes from our inferiority. Our need of moving to and 
fro, of stretching our limbs and bending our bodies, shows 
only our defect. What are our legs but crutches, by means 
of which, with restless efforts, we go hunting after the things 
we have not inside of ourselves ? But the earth is no such 
cripple ; why should she, who already possesses within herself 
the things we so painfully pursue, have limbs analogous to 
ours? Shall she mimic a small part of herself? What need 
has she of arms, with nothing to reach for ; of a neck, with 
no head to carry ; of eyes or nose, when she finds her way 
through space without either, and has the millions of eyes 
of all her animals to guide their movements on her surface, 
and all their noses to smell the flowers that grow ? For, as 
we are ourselves a part of the earth, so our organs are her 
organs. She is, as it were, eye and ear over her whole extent, 
seeing and hearing at once all that we see and hear in separa- 
tion. She brings forth living beings of countless kinds upon 
her surface, and their multitudinous conscious relations with 
each other she takes up into her higher and more general 
conscious life. 

Most of us, considering the theory that the whole terres- 



286 THE HIBBERT JOURNAL 

trial mass is animated as our bodies are, make the mistake 
of working the analogy too literally, and allowing for no 
differences. If the earth be a sentient organism, we say, 
where are its brain and nerves ? What corresponds to its 
heart and lungs ? In other words, we expect functions which 
she already performs through us, to be performed outside 
of us again, and in just the same way. But we see perfectly 
well how the earth performs some of these functions in a way 
unlike our way. If you speak of circulation, what need has 
she of a heart, when the sun keeps all the showers that fall 
upon her, and all the springs and brooks and rivers that 
irrigate her, going? What need has she of internal lungs, 
when her whole sensitive surface is in living commerce with 
the atmosphere that clings to it? 

The organ that gives us most trouble is the brain. All 
the consciousness we directly know seems tied to brains. 
Can there be consciousness, we ask, where there is no brain ? 
But our brain, which primarily serves to correlate our muscular 
reactions with the external objects on which we depend, 
performs a function which the earth performs in an entirely 
different way. She has no proper muscles or limbs of her 
own, and the only objects external to her are the other stars. 
To these her whole mass reacts by most exquisite alterations 
in its total gait, and by still more exquisite vibratory responses 
in its substance. Her ocean reflects the lights of heaven as 
in a mighty mirror, her atmosphere refracts them like a 
monstrous lens, the clouds and snowfields combine them into 
white, the woods and flowers disperse them into colours. 
Polarisation, interference, absorption, awaken sensibilities in 
matter of which our senses are too coarse to take any note. 

For these cosmic relations of hers, then, she no more needs 
a special brain than she needs eyes or ears. Our brains do 
indeed unify and correlate innumerable functions. Our eyes 
know nothing of sound, our ears nothing of light ; but, having 
brains, we can feel sound and light together, and compare 
them. We account for this by the fibres which in the brain 



THE EARTH-SOUL 287 

connect the optical with the acoustic centre ; but just how 
such fibres bring the sensations as well as the centres together 
we fail to see. But if fibres are what is needed to do that 
trick, has not the earth pathways enough by which you and 
I are physically continuous, to do for our two minds what the 
brain fibres do for the sounds and sights in a single mind ? 
Cannot the earth-mind know the contents of our two minds 
together ? Must every higher means of unification between 
things be also a brain-fibre, and go by that name ? 

Fechner's imagination, insisting on the differences as well 
as on the resemblances, thus tries to make our picture of the 
whole earth's life more concrete. He revels in the thought of 
its perfections. To carry her precious freight through the 
hours and seasons, what form could be more excellent than 
hers being as it is horse, wheels, and wagon all in one ? Think 
of her beauty a shining ball, sky-blue and sunlit over one 
half, the other bathed in starry night, reflecting the heavens 
from all her waters, myriads of lights and shadows in her 
mountains' folds and valleys' windings, she would be a 
spectacle of rainbow glory could one only see her from afar 
as we see parts of her from her own mountain-tops. Every 
quality of landscape that has a name would then be visible at 
once in her all that is delicate or graceful, all that is quiet 
or wild, or romantic, or desolate, or cheerful, or luxuriant, or 
fresh. That landscape is her face a peopled landscape, too, 
for men's eyes would appear in it like diamonds among the 
dewdrops. Green would be the dominant colour, but the 
blue atmosphere and the clouds would enshroud her as a veil 
enshrouds a bride a veil the vapoury transparent folds of 
which the earth, through her ministers the winds, never tires 
of laying and folding about herself anew. 

Every element has its own living denizens ; can the celestial 
ocean of aether whose waves are light, in which the earth 
herself floats, not have hers, higher by as much as their ele- 
ment is higher, swimming without fins, flying without wings, 
moving, immense and tranquil, as by a half-spiritual force 



288 THE HIBBERT JOURNAL 

through the half- spiritual sea which they inhabit, rejoicing in 
the exchange of luminous influence with one another, following 
the slightest pull of one another's attraction, and harbouring, 
each of them, an inexhaustible inward wealth ? 

Men have always made fables about angels, dwelling in 
the light, needing no earthly food or drink, messengers 
between ourselves and God. Here are actually existent 
beings, dwelling in the light and moving through the sky, 
needing neither food nor drink, intermediaries between God 
and us, obeying his commands. So, if the heavens really are 
the home of angels, the heavenly bodies must be those very 
angels, for other creatures there are none. Yes ! the earth is 
our great common guardian angel, who watches over all our 
interests combined. 

In a striking page Fechner relates one of his moments of 
direct vision of this truth. 

" On a certain spring morning I went out to walk. The 
fields were green, the birds sang, the dew glistened, the smoke 
was rising, here and there a man appeared ; a light as of 
transfiguration lay on all things. It was only a little bit 
of the earth ; it was only one moment of her existence ; and 
yet, as my look embraced her more and more, it seemed to 
me not only so beautiful an idea, but so true and clear a 
fact, that she is an angel, an angel so rich and fresh and 
flower-like, and yet going her round in the skies so firmly 
and so at one with herself, turning her whole living face to 
heaven, and carrying me along with her into that heaven, 
that I asked myself how the opinions of men could ever 
have so spun themselves away from life so far as to deem 
the earth only a dry clod, and to seek for angels above it 
or about it in the emptiness of the sky, only to find them 
nowhere. But such an experience as this passes for fantastic. 
The earth is a sphere, and what more she may be one can 
find in mineralogical cabinets." 1 

Where there is no vision the people perish. Few pro- 

1 Fechner, Vb. d. Seelenfrage, 186l, p. 170. 




THE EARTH-SOUL 289 

fessorial philosophers have any vision. Fechner had vision, 
and that is why one can read him over and over again, and 
each time bring away a fresh sense of reality. 

His earliest book was a vision of what the inner life of 
ts may be like. He called it Nanna. In the develop- 
ment of animals the nervous system is the central fact. 

nts develop centrifugally, spread their organs abroad. 

r that reason people suppose that they can have no con- 
iousness, for they lack the unity which the central nervous 
system provides. But the plant's consciousness may be of 
another type, connected with other structures. Violins and 
pianos give out sounds because they have strings. Does it 
follow that nothing but strings can give out sounds ? How, 
then, about flutes and organ-pipes ? Of course their sounds 
are of a different quality, and so may the consciousness of 
plants be of a quality correlated exclusively with the kind 
of organisation that they possess. Nutrition, respiration, pro- 
pagation take place in them without nerves. In us these 
functions are conscious only in unusual states ; normally 
their consciousness is eclipsed by that which goes with the 
brain. No such eclipse occurs in plants, and their lower 
consciousness may therefore be all the more lively. With 
nothing to do but to drink the light and air with their 
leaves, to let their cells proliferate, to feel their rootlets draw 
the sap, is it conceivable that they should not consciously 
suffer if water, light, and air were suddenly withdrawn ; or 
that when the flowering and fertilisation which are the 
culmination of their life take place, they should not feel 
their own existence more intensely and enjoy something like 
what we call pleasure in ourselves ? Does the water-lily, 
rocking in her triple bath of water, air, and light, relish in 
no wise her own beauty ? When the plant in our own room 
turns to the light, closes her blossoms in the dark, responds 
to our watering or pruning by increase of size or change of 
shape and bloom, who has the right to say she does not feel, 
or that she plays a purely passive part ? Truly plants can 
VOL. VII. No. 2. 19 



290 THE H1BBERT JOURNAL 

foresee nothing, neither the scythe of the mower nor the hand 
extended to pluck their flowers. They can neither run away 
nor cry out. But this only proves how different their modes 
of feeling life must be from those of animals that live by 
eyes and ears and locomotive organs ; it does not prove that 
they have no mode of feeling life at all. 

How scanty and scattered would sensation be on our 
globe, if the conscious life of plants were blotted from ex- 
istence ! Solitary would consciousness move through the 
woods in the shape of some deer or other quadruped, or fly 
about the flowers in that of some insect. But can we really 
suppose that the nature through which God's breath blows 
is such a barren wilderness as this? 

I have probably by this time said enough to acquaint 
those readers who have never seen these metaphysical writings 
of Fechner, with their more general characteristics, and I 
hope that many may now feel like reading them in the 
original. The special thought of Fechner's with which in 
this place I have most practical concern is his belief that the 
more inclusive forms of consciousness are in part constituted 
by the more limited forms. Not that they are the mere sum 
of the more limited forms. As our mind is not the bare 
sum of our sights plus our sounds plus our pains, but in 
adding these terms together also finds relations among them 
and weaves them into schemes and forms and objects, of 
which no one in its separate estate knows anything, so the 
earth -soul traces relations between the contents of my mind 
and the contents of yours of which neither of our separate 
minds is conscious. It has schemes, forms, and objects pro- 
portionate to its wider field, which our mental fields are far 
too narrow to cognise. By ourselves we are simply out of 
relation with each other ; in it we are both of us there, and 
" different " from each other, which is a positive relation. 
What we are without knowing, it knows that we are. We 
are closed against the world, but that world is not closed 
against us. It is as if the total universe of inner life had 



THE EARTH-SOUL 291 

a sort of grain or direction, a sort of valvular structure 
permitting knowledge to flow in one way only, so that the 
wider might always have the narrower under observation, 
but never the narrower the wider. 

Fechner's great analogy here is the relation of the senses to 
our individual minds. When our eyes are open their sensa- 
tions enter into our general mental life, which grows incessantly 
by the addition of what they see. Close the eyes, however, 
and the visual additions stop ; nothing but thoughts and 
memories of the past visual experiences remain in combina- 
tion, of course, with the enormous stock of other thoughts and 
memories, and with the data of the remaining senses not yet 
closed. Our eye-sensations of themselves know nothing of 
this enormous life into which they fall. Fechner thinks, as 
any common man would think, that they are taken into it 
directly when they occur, and form part of it just as they 
are. They don't stay outside and get represented inside by 
their copies. It is only the memories and concepts of them 
that are copies ; the sensations and percepts are just taken in 
or walled out in their own proper persons according as the 
eyes are open or shut. 

Fechner likens our individual persons on the earth unto 
so many sense-organs of the earth's soul. We add to its 
perceptive life so long as our own life lasts. It absorbs our 
perceptions, just as they occur, into its larger sphere of know- 
ledge, and combines them with the other data there. When 
one of us dies, it is as if an eye of the world were closed, for 
all perceptive contributions from that particular quarter cease. 
But the memories and conceptual relations that have spun 
themselves round the perceptions of that person remain in the 
larger earth-life as distinct as ever, and form new relations and 
grow and develop throughout all the future, in the same way 
in which our own distinct objects of thought, once stored in 
memory, form new relations and develop throughout our whole 
finite life. This is Fechner's theory of immortality, first 
published in the little Buchkin des Lebens nach dem Tode 



292 THE HIBBERT JOURNAL 

in 1836, and re-edited in greatly improved shape in the last 
volume of his Zend-Avesta. 

We rise upon the earth as wavelets rise upon the sea. We 
grow from her soil as leaves grow from a tree. The wavelets 
catch the sunbeams separately, the leaves stir when the branches 
do not move. They realise their own events apart, just as in 
our own consciousness of anything emphatic the background 
fades from observation. Yet the event works back upon the 
background, as the waves work upon other waves, or as the 
leafs movements work upon the sap inside the branch. The 
whole sea and the whole tree are registers of what has happened, 
and are different from the wave's and leafs action having 
occurred. A grafted twig may modify its scion to the roots : 
so our outlived private experiences, impressed on the whole 
earth-mind as memories, lead the immortal life of ideas there, 
form parts of the great system, as distinguished as we by our- 
selves were distinct, realising themselves no longer isolatedly, 
but along with one another, entering then into new combina- 
tions, and being affected by the perceptive experiences of the 
living who survive us, and affecting the living in their turn, 
although they are so seldom recognised by living men as 
doing so. 

If you imagine that this entrance into a common future life 
of higher type means merging and loss of distinct personality, 
Fechner asks you whether a visual sensation of our own exists 
in any sense less for itself or less distinctly, when it enters into 
our higher relational consciousness and is there distinguished 
and defined ? 

Thus is the universe alive, according to this philosopher ! 
I think you will admit that he makes it more thickly alive 
than do the other philosophers who, following rationalistic 
methods solely, gain the same results, but only in the thinnest 
outlines. Both Fechner and Professor Royce, for example, 
believe ultimately in one all-inclusive mind. Both believe that 
we, just as we stand here, are constituent parts of that mind. 
No other content has it than us, with all the other creatures 



likP 



THE EARTH-SOUL 293 



like or unlike us. Our caches, collected into one, are sub- 
stantively identical with that all, though the all is perfect while 
no each is perfect, so that we have to admit that new qualities 
accrue from the collective form, which is thus superior to the 
distributive. Having reached this result, Royce (though his 
treatment of the subject on its moral side seems to me 
infinitely richer and thicker than that of any other con- 
temporary idealistic philosopher) leaves us very much to our 
own devices. Fechner, on the contrary, tries to trace the 
superiorities due to the more collective form in as much 
detail as he can. He marks the various intermediary stages 
and halting-places of collectivity as we are to our separate 
senses, so is the earth to us, so is the solar system to the earth, 
etc. ; and if, in order to escape an infinitely long summation, 
he posits an absolute God as the all-container and leaves him 
about as indefinite in feature as the idealists leave their 
absolute, he yet provides us with a very definite gate of 
approach to him in the shape of the earth-soul, through 
which in the nature of things we must first make connection 
with all the more enveloping superhuman realms, and with 
which our more immediate religious commerce has at any rate 
to be carried on. 

Ordinary transcendentalism leaves everything intermediary 
out. It recognises only the extremes, as if after the first 
rude face of the phenomenal world in all its particularity 
nothing but the supreme in all its perfection could be found. 
First, you and I, just as we are in our places ; and the moment 
we get below that surface, the unutterable Absolute itself! 
Doesn't this show a singularly indigent imagination? Isn't 
this brave universe made on a richer pattern, with room in it 
for a long hierarchy of beings ? Materialistic science makes 
it infinitely richer in terms, with its molecules and aether, and 
electrons, and what not. Absolute idealism, thinking of reality 
only under intellectual forms, knows not what to do with 
bodies of any grade, and can make no use of any psycho- 
physical analogy or correspondence. The resultant thinness 



294 THE HIBBERT JOURNAL 

is startling when compared with the thickness and articulation 
of such a universe as Fechner paints. May not satisfaction 
with the rationalistic absolute as the Alpha and Omega, and 
treatment of it in all its abstraction as an adequate religious 
object, argue a certain native indigence of mind ? Things 
reveal themselves soonest to those who passionately want them. 
Need sharpens wit. To a mind content with little, the much 
in the universe may always remain hid. 

To be candid, one of my reasons for printing this article 
about Fechner has been to make the thinness of our current 
transcendentalism appear more evident by an effect of contrast. 
Scholasticism ran thick ; Hegel himself ran thick ; but English 
and American transcendentalism run thin. If philosophy is 
more a matter of passionate vision than of logic and I believe 
it is, logic only finding reasons for the vision afterwards must 
not such thinness come, either from the vision being defective 
in the disciples, or from their passion, matched with Fechner's 
or with Hegel's own passion, being as moonlight unto sunlight 
or as water unto wine ? 

WILLIAM JAMES. 



'SYCHOTHERAPEUTICS AND RELIGION. 
DR HENRY RUTGERS MARSHALL, 

New York. 

I. WERE the complete history of medical science written, it 
would without doubt appear that the treatment of disease 
through what seem to be mental influences has prevailed in one 
form or another ever since man began to realise that certain 
illnesses are curable. Yet psychotherapeutics as a science may 
be said to have had its origin in the famous investigations as 
to the nature of hypnotism undertaken at Nancy under the 
leadership of Bernheim, and coincidently by Charcot in Paris, 
only some twenty-five years ago. These investigations began 
with the careful observation of certain modes of therapeutic 
practice jvhich were being used in an unscientific manner at 
that time under such names as animal magnetism, mesmerism, 
etc., and which we now see had been thus employed from time 
immemorial by those who practised the so-called occult arts, 
magic and necromancy. 

But attention to these phenomena has also brought into 
existence a small host of cults, e.g. Mental Healing, Mind 
Cure, Faith Cure, Metaphysical Healing, Christian Science, etc., 
whose leaders make use in a more or less bungling way of the 
methods of the more scientific psychotherapeutics, but explain 
the resultant cures in terms of doctrines of very dubious nature. 

In a large proportion of cases at least, the first crude 
therapeutics of the uncivilised man probably had its origin 
among those of the priestly class, which, in the nature of the 



295 



296 THE HIBBERT JOURNAL 

case, included all men of special wisdom ; and so far as crude 
psychotherapeutics was employed in the earlier days, it must 
almost certainly have been practised under the same auspices, 
and in connection with religious doctrinal teaching. This 
being the case, it is not at all surprising to find a tendency 
to couple religious or semi-religious teaching with our newer 
psychotherapeutic practice. All the cults above referred to 
claim to teach what may be broadly described as religious 
doctrines in conjunction with their mental healing ; and as the 
forms of doctrine preached have proved acceptable, these cults 
have gained strength apart from, and even in the antagonism 
to, the established Churches, and notwithstanding opposition 
from the scientifically trained men in the medical profession. 

The growth of these cults, however, has in general been 
very limited, Christian Science having alone been markedly 
successful ; and this evidently because in Mrs Eddy it has a 
prophetess who has delivered a message, and who has written 
what is to her followers a sacred book. 

Christian Science deals with psychotherapeutics, and it is 
also announced as a new religion, or a new interpretation of 
the religious movement instituted by Christ. Its therapeutics 
is opposed by men of training because of the absurdity of its 
modes of explanation of the facts with which it deals ; because 
of its unscientific methods of procedure ; and because of the 
unfounded claims it makes as to the cure of radical organic 
diseases, which claims, indeed, it is bound in consistency to 
make if the doctrines it teaches are well based. Its religious 
teachings might naturally be expected to arouse some hostile 
feeling among the established Churches in the fact that it 
claims to present a new and truer interpretation of the 
Scriptures, and this hostility has not been reduced by the 
recognition that Christian Science is gaining not a few con- 
verts from the members of the long-established Churches, and 
that it seems to be moving to new triumphs where these latter 
have failed to advance. 

But what we may perhaps call the worldly success of 



PSYCHOTHERAPEUTICS 297 

Christian Science has led the churchman to note the fact 
that its advance seems bound up with the cure of disease, 
with which his church concerns itself only very indirectly. 
He has seen for years the growth among the people of a habit 
of turning to their medical advisers for counsel which but a 
generation ago would have been asked from the priest : he 
now sees the sudden growth of a new church, the leaders of 
which claim to take the place of both medical adviser and 
priest. Naturally, then, he asks whether his church's hold 
upon the people cannot be retained if he add to his priestly 
function that of the medical adviser, and naturally we find 
suddenly appearing within certain of the churches a new 
school which holds that, if a church is to fulfil its function 
completely, it must add to its establishment a psychothera- 
peutic clinic such as is called for by Dr Worcester and Dr 
MacComb of Emmanuel Church in Boston, where this move- 
ment is at present most thoroughly organised. If we may 
judge from the interest the work of this Boston church has 
aroused, it seems likely that pressure will be brought to bear 
upon a large body of the clergy to establish similar clinics in 
connection with their churches. It may be well worth while, 
therefore, to make a comparison between the characteristics of 
Christian Science and those of the Emmanuel Movement as it 
has been lately described in the " official " volume called 
Religion and Medicine. 

II. (1) The Christian Scientist maintains that religion and 
therapeutics are inseparably connected ; and (2) in defence 
of this position points to the cures resulting from treatment 
by their leaders, claiming that they can do all that the trained 
physician can do, and are able to effect cures which the physician 
cannot accomplish ; beyond this, (3) its founder, Mrs Eddy, 
attempts to establish these claims by a special interpretation 
of the Scriptures, building upon that as a foundation a meta- 
physical structure which her disciples present as a warrant for 
their practice. Let us consider these points in reverse order. 



298 THE HIBBERT JOURNAL 

Mrs Eddy's interpretation of the Scriptures is largely 
based upon the assumption of the verbal inspiration of the 
original texts and the accuracy of our English translation, and 
it is true, as the Emmanuel workers say, that " she interprets 
Scripture in a way that excites the scholar's disgust." For 
this, however, she should not be too sharply criticised ; for her 
outlook upon life has been exceedingly limited, and in this 
procedure she has merely followed in the footsteps of the 
worthies of the Church, with whose methods she must have 
been more or less familiar. 

The metaphysical doctrines promulgated by her, and 
treated as inspired by her followers, surely cannot be treated 
seriously when one of her most reverent disciples, who writes 
a learned apologetic of over 700 pages, 1 acknowledges that 
" the first reading of her chief work, Science and Health, with 
a Key to the Scriptures, leaves the impression, in spite of 
much that is strikingly beautiful and true, that there is a 
prevailing tone of incoherence, contradiction, illogicality and 
arbitrary, dictatorial assertion, with no regard for evident fact 
either in the realm of objective nature or history." 

One cannot but note how definitely her poorly systematised 
metaphysical doctrine leads in the direction of mysticism, 
which indeed seems to have a fascination for the leaders of the 
Emmanuel Movement themselves, if we may judge by their 
assumptions as to the nature and function of the " unconscious 
mind," of which we speak below. In fact, it appears that 
Christian Science and all kindred cults attract many to their 
shrines just because they there gain the satisfactions which 
mysticism in all its forms brings : the relief from effort to 
think clearly ; the delight yielded by the removal of all of the 
strain attending the appreciation of foresight and responsibility, 
which must accompany any belief in the individual's absorption 
within the being of the universal. 

It is all too easy, however, to consider this general move- 

1 The Interpretation of Life, in which is shown the relation of Modern 
Culture and Christian Science : by C. C. Mars. 



PSYCHOTHERAPEUTICS 299 

ment from a coldly critical standpoint ; we are likely to gain 
a more satisfactory insight if we take a more sympathetic view. 
We must face the fact that great numbers of men and women, 
rhose intelligence we do not think of questioning when we 
ieet them in the ordinary walks of life, nevertheless follow the 
things of Christian Science and allied cults which seem to 
jmand logical blindness and hopeless unintelligence. There 
must be some latent reason why they are willing to lay aside 
the safeguards of rational life in favour of the non-rational or 
even the irrational, and I take it that the mystic attraction 
just referred to would in most cases fail of efficacy were it not 
that those who thus slip from the firm ground of reason believe 
that physical sufferings of their own, or of their close friends, 
have been relieved in connection with the acceptance of these 
unreasoned doctrines, as they could not have been in any other 
manner ; and this brings us to the consideration of the second 
point referred to above. 

III. All physicians of broad practice and keen observation 
realise that certain pains may be alleviated or cured, and that 
certain morbid conditions may be made to disappear, provided 
a change in the mental state of the patient can be brought 
about. To what processes this is due they do not often stop 
to inquire ; their business is to cure, and when they find an 
effective instrument at hand they are likely to use it without 
etiological inquiry. 

The studies of hypnotism above referred to, and kindred 
inquiries, especially in relation to hysteria, have shown that if 
we can persuade a person that a pain of which he complains 
has disappeared, a change for the better in his physical con- 
dition will often follow. It does not require special learning 
to build up a psychotherapeutic practice based upon the 
observation of such cases ; and the Christian Science healers, 
narrowly educated and of narrow experience, have done just 
this thing, resting upon the theory that the mental influence 
of the healer is the effective curative agent. It is easy to see 



300 THE HIBBERT JOURNAL 

how a development of this theory would lead to the assumption 
that all kinds of diseases may be curable by mental influences 
emanating from a healer, this leading to the practice of the 
so-called " absent -treatment," with all its follies and dangers. 

To the claims thus made the educated and experienced 
physician naturally enters a vigorous demurrer ; he knows all 
too well the processes of physical decay, which no human skill 
can do more than delay. And the leaders of the Emmanuel 
Movement here take issue with Christian Science ; for they hold 
that psychotherapeutics can only be effective in the treatment 
of functional nervous diseases ; and they argue that specially 
trained physicians should be called into consultation to 
determine whether cases of nervous trouble presented to them 
for treatment are functional and not organic. We may over- 
look the question whether the distinction between functional 
and organic disease is one that is sufficiently fundamental to 
warrant the adoption of a mode of therapeutic treatment which 
may apply to the functional class while not applying to the 
organic ; but we cannot overlook the fact that the leaders of 
the Emmanuel Movement, whose special training has been to 
prepare them for other work, are willing and anxious to under- 
take the cure of disease, for which the skilled physician has 
specially prepared himself, and to which he has perhaps devoted 
a lifetime of serious effort. The effective physician must be 
a man of keen insight, sound judgment, un warped by emotion- 
alism, and wise ; yes, at times even " worldly wise." It cannot 
be maintained that the clergy as a rule are recruited from 
those in whom these characteristics are markedly displayed, 
nor that their training and occupation tend to emphasise these 
qualities. We cannot but group together the Christian 
Science healer and the Emmanuel Movement leader as men 
who lightly take upon themselves work which the most serious 
experts in medicine study with the deepest care and handle 
with the greatest caution. 

Such an attitude can only be condoned if we grant that 
these functional nervous diseases can be treated more success- 



PSYCHOTHERAPEUTICS 301 

fully under religious influences than in the non-religious 
atmosphere of the scientific study of disease ; and this claim 
is quite clearly made by the advocates of the methods here 
described. This brings us to the question whether it is true 
that religion and therapeutics are inseparably connected. 

IV. It would probably be conceded that religion and 
therapeutics are necessarily related if it were generally believed 
that certain diseases can be cured under religious influences 
that cannot be cured in any other way. But evidence favour- 
able to this belief is difficult to reach. The sceptical physician 
could probably present cases of the type usually treated by 
psychotherapeutic methods which he has cured, although the 
religious healer has failed to do so ; but it would evidently be 
absurd to argue from this that irreUgion and therapeutics are 
necessarily connected. So without doubt cases may be cited 
where disease has been alleviated by the Christian Science 
and kindred treatments which had not been benefited by 
many doctors ; but this of course does not prove that the 
same results might not have been gained without religious 
influences had the proper physicians been consulted. It is 
easy to create an impression favourable to a given view by 
persistent reiteration of claims such as is made by the religious 
healers ; but we are learning that if such claims are to be 
accepted they must be substantiated by scientifically presented 
evidence, and this we here find to be lacking. The religious 
healers as a class are unfamiliar with and averse to the labour 
of collecting accurate statistics : we have therefore no proper 
means of comparison between the results obtained by the 
skilled physician who guards his statements by careful calcula- 
tions, and the religious healer who takes no such precaution. 
There is thus a presumption against the claim of the latter, 
which becomes stronger when we consider that he habitually 
makes use of the very modes of suggestive treatment that are 
employed by the skilled neurologist. The religious healer will 
claim that he uses the " power of prayer " as the neurologist 



302 THE HIBBERT JOURNAL 

does not ; but if, as we shall presently show, the efficacy of 
prayer in this connection is due to its power of suggestion, 
the most the religious healer can claim is that he employs a 
more powerful suggestive method than that used by physicians : 
a claim which it would be difficult to substantiate. 

Suggestion is ineffective unless the patient is in a receptive 
attitude of mind, and therefore trust in the one who suggests 
a willingness and anxiety to receive command is essential 
to the efficacy of the psychotherapeutic treatment. It is 
probably true that some patients are less ready to put their 
trust in a physician, who is to them merely a man who claims 
wisdom, than in a religious teacher, who appears as the 
representative of a loving and powerful God. Where, then, 
we find trust more readily yielded to the religious teacher than 
to the doctor, we should be led to urge the importance of 
the function of the religious leader as an interpreter to the 
physician, but should surely not find in it an indication that 
the religious leader may take the physician's role. 

It is not at all unlikely that the religious healer at times 
brings about in his patient something closely allied to a real 
religious conversion. In religious conversions of a profound type 
we see the replacement of one morbid individuality by a new and 
more moral one, and the shifting of point of view so that ideas 
and aims which were formerly persistent give place to others. 
Now the very ideas and aims that are thus displaced may have 
been correlated with morbid physical conditions, and in that 
case their displacement means the appearance of new physical 
conditions which may effect the disappearance of what is 
morbid. In cases where the medical doctor notes that his 
patient has not felt the influence of religion, and surmises that 
religious conversion may bring relief, it may appear wise for 
him to call the clergyman to his aid. We are thus led to hold 
that collaboration between the medical doctor and the religious 
leader is greatly to be desired, but are surely not warranted in 
suggesting the assumption by either of the role of the other in 
addition to his own. 






PSYCHOTHERAPEUTICS 303 



Religion has to do with ethics, with conduct and motive, 
with the emphasis of the best impulses that are within us ; and 
with these things therapeutics cannot pretend to deal. 

Nor can it for a moment be conceded that religion is 
dependent for its persistence upon any physical benefit to be 
gained by the religious devotee. It is very doubtful whether 
many thoughtful Christians will accept the teaching of the 
Emmanuel Church leaders, when they perceive that it implies 
that Christ's healing of the sick was of the very essence of his 
message to humanity. 

V. Christian Scientists make little pretence of explaining 
their methods or practice in rational terms ; nor is it of im- 
portance to them to do so. Based as their system is upon a 
misconceived idealism, it merely proclaims the unreality of 
pain, disease, and error, and naturally demands no explanations 
of what it treats as non-existents. 1 

The intellectual follies to which these ill-digested meta- 
physical theories lead naturally produce a revolt in men of 
more logical bent ; and we find the Emmanuel leaders, who 
really care to explain their methods in rational terms, replacing 

1 The psychological basis of this crude metaphysical thesis seems to be 
found in the relative instability of pain, with which disease and error are 
con-elated. Pleasant experiences tend to persist, and this because they are 
the correlates of efficient neural activities. Painful experiences, on the other 
hand, tend to disappear from attention, and this because they are the correlates 
of inefficient neural activities which tend to cease : they may be persistent 
enough, as we all too well know ; that is, however, not because of their inner 
nature, but because of the persistence of external or internal stimuli, which 
force the activity which, but for the stimulation, would quickly disappear. It is 
without doubt the vague recognition of this instability of pain itself, as com- 
pared with the stability of pleasure itself, that leads to the assertion of the 
unrealness of pain. This psychological fact is then quite illogically transmuted 
into an unwarranted metaphysical principle which maintains the unreality of, 
the non-existence of, pains as such. If there is a sense in which this is 
true, it is also necessary to maintain in the same sense the unreality of pleasure 
as such ; but it never occurs to the defenders of these vague theories to 
maintain the unreality of pleasure as such ; rather do they treat pleasure as a 
reality to which we have a right in the nature of the constitution of the 
universe. 



304 THE HIBBERT JOURNAL 

them by conceptions that on their face seem much more 
reasonable. Their argument may be summarised as follows : l 

1. The mind has power over the body (p. 2). 

2. (a) There exists in each of us (p. 42) a " sub-conscious 
mind " which is " a normal part of our spiritual nature." 
(b) This sub-conscious mind is "purer, more sensitive to 
good and evil, than our conscious mind," and (c) " has more 
direct control of our physical processes than the conscious." 
(d) This powerful sub-conscious mind acts favourably upon 
the nerves as the result of suggestion and auto-suggestion. 

3. (a) " Faith simply as a psychical process or mental atti- 
tude ... has healing virtue " (p. 293). (b) The more deeply 
personality is involved in any given ailment, the more neces- 
sary is it that faith should have an object worthy of men's 
ethical dignity (p. 294), i.e. this faith should be directed toward 
God. (c) " The prayer of faith has an immense influence over 
the functions of organic life " (p. 312), and " when we pray 
earnestly and long for the moral and physical welfare of 
another, our soul not only acts on that one, but our prayer, 
rising in the mind of God, directs his will more powerfully and 
constantly to the soul for which we pray " (p. 316). Hence the 
value of the association of religion with psychotherapy. 

Let us consider these main conceptions in reverse order. 

VI. Faith "as a psychical process or mental attitude" 
implies a listening for and a willingness to obey a command or 
suggestion : and evidently prayer as a psychical process is 
closely allied with the mental attitude of faith. When one 
prays for a second person in that person's presence, the one 
who prays is clearly suggesting to the other, and enforcing 
in the other's mind the ideas suggested. When one prays 
for oneself he is doing the very same thing, but by what is 
called auto-suggestion. 

If one then says that " faith has healing virtue," and that 

1 Page numbers in brackets refer to Religion and Medicine as above 
mentioned. 



PSYCHOTHERAPEUTICS 305 

prayer " has an immense influence over the functions of organic 
life," we may say that no more is claimed than that the 
attitude in which suggestion is effective, and the actual 
process of suggestion, are often followed by improvement in 
physical condition : a proposition which will be granted, and 
which evidently may be granted without any acceptance of 
the doubtful hypothesis above referred to, as to the manner 
in which the prayer of a human being affects the mind of 
God, and renders God's mind more effective in relation to the 
human soul prayed for. 

VII. We are thus carried forward to the second point 
made by the Emmanuel leaders, viz. that suggestion is 
effective especially, if not almost wholly, through what is 
called the sub-conscious mind. In this connection we may 
study briefly, (1) the nature of suggestion as a psychic process ; 
and (2) the hypothesis as to the existence and the nature of 
the "sub-conscious mind." 

1. Altogether too much mystery is attached by the psycho- 
therapists to the process of suggestion, which as a matter of 
fact we employ, and are subject to, in every moment of our 
active lives. One uses suggestion whenever he forces an 
idea into prominence in the mind of another; and what is 
recognised by the psychotherapist and his patient as suggestion 
differs from this everyday performance only in the clear 
intention of the one suggesting, and the recognition by the 
patient that the healer is attempting to dominate his thought. 

When we make our suggestions to a hypnotised patient 
we are bringing about changes in the patient's mental realm 
of the abnormal moment, which produce results in the mental 
situation of the non-hypnotic condition. 

In auto-suggestion the patient, having gained the con- 
ception of a set of ideas which it is desirable to emphasise, 
uses every effort to make the appearance of these ideas 
persistent ; and, as we have already seen, this auto-suggestion 
may be gained through the reiteration of an idea through 
VOL. VII. No. 2. 20 



306 THE H1BBERT JOURNAL 

prayer. It is to be noted also that the process of auto- 
suggestion from the psychological point of view is identical 
with the process of voluntary action or " willing." For it will 
probably be granted that the Emmanuel Church workers are 
warranted in describing auto-suggestion as a "self-imposed 
! narrowing of the field of consciousness to one idea, by holding 
a given thought in the mental focus to the exclusion of all 
other thoughts " (p. 93). Nor will any psychologist deny that 
in this they give us a fairly accurate description of the 
voluntary act ; for, as Professor Royce l puts it, " to will a 
given act is to think attentively of that act to the exclusion 
of the representation or imagining of any and all other acts." 
This being the case, it is easy to comprehend the close alliance 
between those who claim to cure by power of will and those 
who claim to cure by auto-suggestion. 

Now it is evident that this process of suggestion is not 
confined to the emphasis of any one type of ideas. The new 
ideas may be more or less normal than those replaced, or they 
may be more or less moral. There is no fundamental differ- 
ence between these forms of suggestion which lead to evil and 
the normal types of suggestion in use in everyday life. 

Nor is there any fundamental difference between these 
latter and the forms of suggestion employed by the mental 
healer, who, however, usually deals with markedly persistent 
morbid ideas which he wishes to displace. These persistent 
morbid ideas are of course correlated with morbid nerve 
situations. If we replace these ideas with others, we reduce 
the emphasis of the morbid ideas, and at the same time alter 
the correlated morbid nerve situation. If, then, by exaggera- 
tion of the everyday process of suggestion we bring into 
existence a new set of persistent ideas, we have at the same 
time eliminated the old and morbid persistent ideas, and co- 
incidently have changed the nerve situation, and may even 
have brought about the disappearance of the morbid nerve 
conditions with which the morbid ideas were correlated. 

1 Outlines of Psychology, p. 36.9. 






PSYCHOTHERAPEUTICS 307 



It seems clear from these considerations that suggestion 
is not a process which is employed alone in psychotherapeutic 
practice. Nor can it be said to be a process which is essentially! 
correlated with the religious attitude of mind. 

2. Turning to the consideration of the hypothesis as to the 
existence and nature of the " sub-conscious mind," we note, 
what will be generally conceded, that when we experience a 
sharp sensation, a clear thought, a well-defined emotion, a 
voluntary choice, i.e. any clearly defined mental element (A) 
which is held in attention, there exists at the same moment 
a specially marked activity in some part (a) of the nerve 
system, usually assumed to be within the brain ; but it would 
never occur to anyone to hold that at the moment considered 
that nerve part (a) is the only part of the nerve system that 
is active ; what we really have in (a) is an emphasis of 
activity in a special part of the all-active nerve system, which 
is a highly complex system of minor systems of nerve parts. 
It is most natural, therefore, to assume that the mental element 
in attention (A) also does not stand alone, but that it is what 
it is because it is contrasted with a highly complex mental 
system which is really a broad system of minor systems of 
psychic elements, which taken in its totality and as inclusive 
of (A) we call consciousness. The parts of this psychic 
system which are apart from A and the rest of the field of 
attention, while not sufficiently emphatic to form part of this 
field of attention, are effective in forming a background 
against which the psychic elements within attention appear ; 
this background may therefore be well described as sub- 
attentive consciousness, and that there exists in each moment 
of an individual's waking life not only a field of attention 
but also a field of sub-attentive consciousness few psychologists 
of importance nowadays would question. It is this sub- 
attentive consciousness that is referred to by those who speak 
of " sub-consciousness." 

Much of the mystery usually felt in relation to this sub- 
attentive consciousness ("sub-consciousness") results from our 



308 THE HIBBERT JOURNAL 

overlooking the fact that it is most intricately systematised, 
just as the parts of the nerve system whose activities 
correspond with it are intricately systematised. It is funda- 
mentally of the same nature as attentive consciousness, and 
we should therefore not be surprised to discover that it is 
affected by elements which appear in the field of attention, 
nor surprised to find the field of attention affected by 
influences initiated within it. The suggestions made to 
patients in sleep and in trances ; the auto-suggestions made 
as one is falling asleep or just awaking, as recommended by 
our Emmanuel healers (p. 106), and by the psychotherapeutists 
in general, are cases where mental elements within the field 
of attention affect the sub-attentive consciousness (" sub-con- 
sciousness "). The cases where suggestions thus made change 
the tone of the mental life of which a man is aware, are 
cases where a changed sub-attentive consciousness (" sub-con- 
scious mind ") affects the man's field of attention. 

The mystery as to the nature of the sub-conscious mind 
being thus dispelled, we are prepared to ask certain questions 
in relation to the tenets of the Emmanuel workers. They 
tell us that this " sub-conscious mind " is a normal part of 
our spiritual nature. Here the word spiritual is doubtless 
intended to refer to something diverse from the field of 
attention in consciousness, but this involves an unwarranted 
assumption. What we mean by our spiritual life is that 
part of our experience of impulse and motive, realised 
or imagined, which yields to us the greatest satisfaction in 
retrospect, and which we, in these moments of reflection, wish 
might persist and recur in our future experience. But we 
have in this no warrant for the description of our spiritual 
being in animistic terms as existing within the body apart from 
both it and mind (p. 390), or even distinct from both body 
and soul (p. 379). 

The statement that the " sub-conscious mind " is " purer, 
more sensative to good and evil, than the conscious " is equally 
unwarranted, although it seems to have the support of so 



PSYCHOTHERAPEUTICS 309 

eminent a psychologist as William James, who tells us : l 
" Starbuck seems to put his finger on the root of the matter 
when he says that to exercise the personal will is still to live 
in the region where the imperfect self is the most emphasised. 
Where, on the contrary, the sub-conscious forces take the lead, 
it is more probably the 'better self in posse which directs the 
operation." 

But how can this be true if, as we have seen above, clearly 
recognised suggestions are not limited to any special type of 
ideas ? for this implies that suggestions to the sub -attentive 
consciousness are in like manner not limited to any special 
type of ideas ; that is, that they may as well be immoral as 
moral. And, whatever these suggestions to the sub-attentive 
consciousness are, if they are effective it must be because they 
are welcomed by this sub-attentive consciousness ; and this 
means that the sub-attentive consciousness is in harmony with 
the ideas welcomed ; so that if immoral suggestions are ever 
effective, it must be because the sub-attentive consciousness is 
less pure, less " sensative to good and evil," than the attentive 
consciousness. 

Now, just this happens in cases of temptation. The 
tempter's suggestions are usually repudiated by the attentive 
consciousness of the tempted man, because he looks upon 
them as immoral ; nevertheless, they so influence the sub- 
attentive consciousness of the tempted man that presently he 
sins without compunction when opportunity offers. 

A similar statement may be made in relation to the process 
of self-sophistication through auto-suggestion. 

We are also compelled to question the statement that 
the sub-attentive consciousness (sub-conscious mind) "has 
more direct control of physical processes than the conscious " 
(p. 42). The sub-attentive consciousness is broader than the 
narrow field of attention ; and its nerve activity correlates 
are doubtless more numerous, and more thoroughly integrated, 
than those corresponding to the mental elements in attention ; 

1 Varieties of Religious Experience, p. 209. 



310 THE HIBBERT JOURNAL 

but it is difficult to see how what we call mental control of 
physical processes can be more efficient in the one case than 
in the other. 

A dim appreciation of the sub-attentive consciousness is 
involved with all "feeling" and all emotion. We are not 
surprised, therefore, to find the evidences of the activity 
of this so-called " sub-conscious mind " in connection with 
our religious emotions; but it is certainly clear that this 
relation is one that holds for all " feeling," and for all 
emotions, and which therefore cannot be claimed to relate 
especially to our religious life. 

It may be well here also to call attention to the fact that 
attentive consciousness merges into sub-attentive consciousness : 
out of the latter, as it were, appears the flitting field of the 
former. This would lead us to hold that as no sharp line can 
be drawn between the two, so no fundamental distinction can 
be made between the therapeutic value of suggestions made to 
the sub-attentive consciousness and to the attentive conscious- 
ness of the clear-headed rational man. The field of attention 
is the active field, the variable field, the field subject to many 
environmental influences which may prevent the influence of 
suggestions, but which, on the other hand, may make these 
suggestions especially effective if they happen to be co-ordinated 
with those elements of attention which make the substance of 
what we call our convictions. The field of sub-attentive con- 
sciousness, on the contrary, is the less active, the less variable 
field, the field little subject to environmental disturbance, i.e. 
the conservative field, which often will sustain persistently and 
without impediment some suggestion given to it, but which 
can be influenced by a suggestion only provided this latter 
accords with its own essential nature, which is relatively 
unvarying. 

It would thus appear that in a certain sense the efficiency 
of suggestion is in general likely to be less marked in relation 
to the sub-attentive than in relation to the attentive conscious- 
ness ; and is only likely to be more marked in relation to the 



PSYCHOTHERAPEUTICS 311 

former if we happen to be dealing with what relates to that 
normal existence which is unconcerned to meet new conditions. 

VIII. We may now turn, within such limits as are here 
appropriate, to the consideration of the nature of that relation 
of our mental and physical states which leads us to say that 
the mind has power over the body. 

The Christian Scientists are more consistent than the 
Emmanuel workers and the average educated man, in that 
the former hold that the mind has power over the whole realm 
of our bodily activities. It is easy for the opponents of this 
cult to offer disproof of any such wide extension of the mind's 
power, but in doing so they present the view that the mind 
has control over the body in certain directions only and not in 
others, and leave us with the highly unsatisfactory notion of 
the common man that the relation of the mind to the body is 
an entirely haphazard and lawless one. 

The category of causality is one upon which we rest, forget- 
ful of its mysteries. Its value is due to the fact that the 
recognition of concrete causal relations enables us to predict 
with certainty events in the future from data found in the 
present. As the result of many experiences we then find 
ourselves gaining satisfaction from the mere statement of the 
existence of a causal relation even where little evidence is at 
hand to warrant such a statement ; we rest content as though 
we had once for all solved all the mysteries involved in the 
relations within the sequence of events we have under con- 
sideration. Thus it is that we satisfy ourselves with the 
assertion that the action of the body causes mental changes, 
and conversely that the mind acts causally upon the body, 
although the greatest uncertainty prevails in prediction as to 
the bodily states that will follow certain mental conditions, 
and as to the mental states that will follow certain bodily 
conditions. 

It is worth our while, therefore, to note that we are aided 
greatly in our comprehension of the relation between our 



312 THE HIBBERT JOURNAL 

mental states and therapeutics by waiving entirely the question 
as to the causal relation between mind and body, turning our 
attention to the hypothesis of " parallelism " which is held by 
a large body of psychologists in our day, according to which 
each change in the psychic system which we call consciousness 
is accompanied by a coincident change in the activities within 
the nervous system. 

We note in a patient a cerUiin morbid state of mind A, 
which under our hypothesis is necessarily accompanied by a 
morbid nerve condition a. When we make a suggestion to 
the patient the state of mind A is replaced by the state of mind 
B, and coincidently of necessity the nerve condition a gives 
place to a certain new nerve condition /J, a fact which is usually 
overlooked. This new nerve condition ft may be one that 
tends to yield a less morbid nerve condition than a, and may 
thus bring into existence a normal nerve condition y, which 
is evidenced by the appearance of a corresponding happier 
mental condition C. 

Turning to auto-suggestion, which we have seen to be 
identical with voluntary action, we note that if a person " wills " 
the disappearance of a pain, he " wills " the replacement of a 
painful mental state by some other that is not painful. To his 
mental " act of will " there corresponds a nerve change ; and if 
therefore the pain disappears, it is because the alterations of 
nerve activity accompanying the act of will are followed by 
new physical conditions to which correspond the new and 
non-painful mental state. Now we have much reason to 
believe that painful mental states correspond with inefficient 
nerve activities, and the displacement of pain therefore means 
that inefficient nerve activities cease more or less completely. 
The physical parts whose activities were inefficient (to which 
pain corresponded) are thus brought to a condition of quies- 
cence which is a condition favourable to recuperation. If, then, 
there be no serious lesion, the replacement of the pain may 
well be followed by repair of the nerve parts affected, and a 
return to normal conditions. 



PSYCHOTHERAPEUTICS 313 

IX. We are thus again led to the conclusion that there is 
no such essential connection between religion and psychothera* 
peutics as is assumed by those whose work is here considered. 
The facts we have presented might lead us to urge the 
physician to encourage the growth of closer and more 
sympathetic relations with the clergy, and to urge the religious 
teacher to trust more implicitly than he does to the trained 
expert ; but if we may judge from the general movement in 
the direction of specialisation, and from a comparison of 
conditions in the past and in the present, the functions of the 
priest and of the physician are likely to become more and 
more distinct in the future. 

It is, of course, a matter of question whether a large 
proportion of the cases treated successfully by the Emmanuel 
Church or Christian Science methods could be benefited if the 
patients were no longer allowed to believe that their cures 
are due to some mysterious or miraculous agency. And this 
raises the broader question whether it is folly to teach wisdom 
where ignorance is bliss. Those who believe that relief from 
pain is of the highest significance in this world would urge us 
to avoid the awakening of the intellect if this awakening means 
the continuance of human suffering. There are those, how- 
ever, with whom the author of this paper allies himself, who 
feel that other ends are more important than the hedonistic, 
and that the greatest nobility of character cannot be gained 
until men are willing calmly to face the facts of life as they 
comprehend them ; that in the long-run it will be better for 
the race to risk the continuance of some suffering among 
weaklings whom the arts of magic can alone relieve, rather 
than to curtail the development of clear thinking among the 
common people. 

HENRY RUTGERS MARSHALL. 

NEW YORK. 



THE SOCIAL CONSCIENCE OF THE 
FUTURE. 

I. 

Miss VIDA SCUDDER. 

I. 

THAT the socialist state is surely on the way, few even 
within the movement would dare confidently to assert; 
that many tendencies point to it, few even without the 
movement would dare deny. With the socialist party in 
Germany gaining a million votes in five years ; with a 
socialist labour-party represented in the British Parliament; 
with the Pan- Anglican Congress drawing its largest and 
most eager audiences to hear socialism discussed and in the 
main endorsed by the clergy indications thicken. In Latin 
Europe the socialists are a force to be increasingly reckoned 
with: if the movement in America is less concentrated 
than in smaller or more autocratic countries, the sentiment 
is perhaps more widely diffused. Shooting Niagara and 
After, was the title of one of Carlyle's alarmist pamphlets 
over half a century ago. The stream is broad, and we 
have not shot Niagara yet ; but the sound we hear may be 
the roar of the approaching falls. 

It is, of course, still possible to stop one's ears ; it is 
also feasible to try to work upstream ; and a large number 
of thinkers, and some statesmen, are to-day engaged in this 
pursuit. Meantime, everybody is talking. A great dis- 

314 



THE CONSCIENCE OF THE FUTURE 315 

cussion is " on," which bids fair to throw all other intellectual 
interests temporarily into the shade. While it rages, the 
socialist vote continues to increase ; and the idea occurs to 
the impartial observer that an activity apart from defence 
or attack might profitably occupy the sober-minded public: 
getting ready for the possible plunge. 

Moral preparation for the New Order! It might well 
be the watchword of the hour ; it is the last thing of which 
one hears. The militant socialists are too busily engaged 
in aggressive propaganda: so preoccupied with their vision 
of healing and liberation for the body, that they lay them- 
selves open to the charge of feeling slight interest in the 
soul. The conservatives are absorbed in defence. Yet in 
the confusion one fact is clear : should socialism come other- 
wise than as the result of an inward transformation, affecting 
the deep springs of will and love, it would prove the worst 
disaster of any experiment in collective living that the world 
has seen. Matthew Arnold, wisest of Victorian critics, 
pointed out years ago the perils with which the advance 
of democracy is fraught, unless it be achieved through a 
common enlightenment and a pervading social passion. 
Socialism is democracy pushed to an extreme. It would 
involve immensely elaborated machinery. Unless the spirit 
of the living creature be in the wheels, one foresees them 
grinding destruction. Should socialism be other than the 
expression of a general will very different from that of 
to-day, it would be an unbearable tyranny. The only com- 
fort is that it could not endure. The socialist state might 
quite conceivably be ushered in suddenly, forced by revolution 
or by the proletariat vote on an unprepared world which 
had undergone no inner change : it could never be so 
maintained. For no social order can be even relatively 
stable if it is mechanically introduced. It must be a growth, 
and growth has to root deeply underground before it shows 
much in the light of day. No one could enforce laws 
against stealing in a community in which two-thirds of the 



316 THE HIBBERT JOURNAL 

citizens had kleptomania. Picturing a social demcocray 
introduced by violence, with its ranks of reluctant citizens 
undergoing the industrial conscription, and of autocratic 
officials running a state enemy to all free self-expression, 
one perceives the very " coming slavery " of standard dread. 
The critics who echo Spencer down the decades are right 
enough from their point of view: far more right, in any 
case, than the old-fashioned doubters who saw in socialism a 
future riot of licence. 

The truth is, that we are forced to agree with our tedious 
friends who insist that we "must alter human nature" if 
socialism is to be a success. 

But is the prospect so staggering? Call History to the 
witness-stand ! Human nature alters perpetually before our 
eyes. The stuff is malleable, nay, fluid, and its changes are 
the soul of progress. A moral transformation has accom- 
panied every new social order evolved since the story of the 
race began. Each vanishing civilisation has been at once 
cause and product of distinct ethical types. Nomadic life 
yields to agricultural ; states rise and fall ; a great imperialism 
gathers the nations into its folds, disintegrates, disappears ; a 
feudal system rises, thrives, decays. Industrialism follows, a 
society founded on commercial ability succeeding one founded 
on physical force. The imagination, brooding on these 
various social orders, recognises them, not by their outward 
traits but by the personal types which they produced. The 
consciousness of those delightful young Athenians, disciples of 
Socrates, friends of Plato, created Greece as much as Greece 
created them. It differed from the mind of the Puritan as much 
as that differs from the mind of the man in the street to-day, 
and both from the mind of the Napoleonic general. Emphases 
change as the ages pass ; ideals shape themselves like clouds, 
and like clouds depart. Now these virtues, now those, are 
fostered ; now these sins, now those, run rank. The pioneer 
in that almost untried study, evolutionary psychology, has a 
fascinating field before him. 



THE CONSCIENCE OF THE FUTURE 317 

So dramatic is this moral shifting, that the virtues of one 
age sometimes become the vices of another. In the days of 
chivalry, the most popular virtue was to run at your neighbour, 
spear in hand, when you met him on the road, and cheerfully 
to knock him off his horse, in accordance with a courteous 
code of etiquette. We do not approve of this practice to-day, 
and chivalry is gone. A new ethics has replaced it. The 
most popular virtue now is to accumulate money enough to 
educate one's family decorously, with a surplus on which to be 
generous though by so doing one push one's neighbour's 
family to the wall. Further contemplating modern ideals, we 
note that this central virtue of Acquisitiveness is surrounded 
by attendant nymphs : Thrift, Energy, and Foresight. Certain 
old-fashioned traits once considered to be virtues are now com- 
monly counted to men for vices. Non-resistance, for example, 
now considered cowardice in men or states ; meekness, to-day 
usually spelled weakness ; taking no thought for the morrow, 
now known as improvidence ; unworldliness, now generally 
viewed as a phase of sentimentality. A perfunctory verbal 
admiration is accorded these qualities in some quarters, but no 
one looking straight at life can fail to see that the person who 
allowed them to rule his conduct consistently and exclusively, 
would not only be likely to ruin the lives of those dear to him, 
but would in the long run become a public charge. 

In all seriousness, the virtues fostered and applauded by 
our present commercial civilisation are the self-regarding ones. 
Many subtle causes have conspired during the last hundred 
and twenty-five years to produce an ideal in which militant 
violence is at a discount and force is replaced by greed, but in 
which the individual is the centre more exclusively than in any 
preceding phase of history, and the defence of personal rights 
in an indifferent or hostile world is the first canon of duty. 
Till this canon is satisfied, all else must be deferred. The 
moral type which emerges, approved and enticing, is one in 
which integrity is at least nominally honoured, and justice is 
not nominally ignored, but in which alertness and prudence, 



318 THE HIBBERT JOURNAL 

energy and practical judgment, point the way to victory, while 
mercy, humility, indifference to personal gain, exercised other- 
wise than as an indulgence supplementary to the serious 
business of life, spell social failure and breed contempt. 

Is this instinct of defiant self-protection destined always to 
remain the master-passion in the social structure ? Surely not 
in its present form. We can be sure of only one thing con- 
cerning the industrial and competitive civilisation which has 
so stressed this instinct, and that is, that its hour will strike. 
As the Age of Violence was succeeded by the Age of Greed, so 
the Age of Greed will be succeeded by some other age, in which 
neither physical force nor commercial cleverness will be the 
key-note of the personal ideal. What this new age will be 
like, we do not know. It is always the unexpected that 
happens, and the great forces that control history work out 
into surprising relations and results. We use the term 
socialism as a sort of algebraic expression, ignorant what 
truth may lie behind the symbol. Algebraic formulas, how- 
ever, truly express laws of relation ; and if we wish to infer 
from future probabilities some guidance to present duty, 
the moral correlate to the socialist state is a fruitful topic 
to consider. 

We might as well use what light we have. So far as we 
can see, what is on the way is a great equalisation of wealth, 
such as Arnold long ago asserted to be necessary to social 
advance. It will be achieved by many restrictions and re- 
adjustments. The functions and privileges of the common life 
will assume an importance that we can hardly imagine ; many 
enterprises now run for private profit will be run for public 
good ; many incentives to productive energy now operative 
will be limited or withdrawn. The individual will find his 
outward life more prepared in advance for him, so to speak, 
than is likely to be the case to-day, unless he is either a 
proletarian or an hereditary legislator. One hardly needs to 
enumerate the incoherent forces which are pointing in this 
direction. The slow but sure growth of the working people 



THE CONSCIENCE OF THE FUTURE 319 

in class-consciousness, and their entrance on political power, 
the consolidation of industry, the spread of social compunction 
all point the same way. Apparently the great changes that 
are coming will divide the future order from the present as 
widely as we are divided from the feudal system. 

It would certainly do no harm to prepare ourselves, and 
yet more our children, for these probably imminent and drastic 
changes. We might well resume a somewhat discredited 
pursuit the culture and training of the interior life from 
a new point of view. " I wish you to open the New Year 
with a sacrifice to the Graces : to put off the old and on the 
new man," wrote that amazing old worldling, Lord Chester- 
field, to his much-exhorted son. Crises recur when society as 
a whole puts off the old Adam and puts on the new. Seeing 
the great New Year that perhaps trembles at the point of 
dawn, it certainly behoves us to follow Chesterfield's good 
counsel : to endue ourselves, so far as in us lies, with the new 
Adam who can thrive in the socialist state to be. 

II. 

It is not difficult to gain at once a general and superficial 
idea of the work that lies before us. Socialism is going to 
demand a great development of the other-regarding virtues. 
Unless the instincts of fair play and of service, and the habit 
of scrutinising the reactions of one's deeds on the general life, 
become more common than now, the members of the new 
society will have a restive and miserable time of it. Nothing 
is simpler than to begin to train oneself at once in these 
instincts. One can put a little catechism to himself every 
night : Should I have been a good citizen of the socialist state 
to-day ? Have I cultivated in myself the impulses that will 
be abiding incentives to life and labour when incentives born 
of self-interest are limited or removed ? Have I desired 
honour, achievement, serviceableness, rather than mere profit ? 
Have I loved my work (if it be in any wise lovable) for work's 
sake, not for gain's sake ? Have I been as sorry over the 



820 THE HIBBERT JOURNAL 

sufferings of my neighbour as over my own sufferings, as 
watchful of his interests as of my own ? Has my spirit been 
free from evil suspicion, or from pleasure in getting ahead of 
others, and full of brotherly trust in men ? Have I found my 
joys less in what I call " mine " than in the great beauties and 
blessings we call " ours " ? 

It is all extremely simple. But if we can say " Yes," then 
in our hearts at least the new order has been born. 

But it is worth while to look more deeply into the probable 
reactions of the socialist state upon the interior life. And the 
first patent fact is that socialism is going to bring with it a 
penetrating discipline, perhaps the most universal in pressure 
of any that history has evolved. " Doing as one likes," that 
distinctively British ideal flouted of Arnold, will be at a 
discount. In important and new respects, we shall all 
have to do what the state likes. We shall have to acquiesce 
in laws of life and labour that may inhibit impulse 
and check achievement at a thousand unsuspected points. 
We shall want to go a-fishing : the stern necessities of the 
industrial conscription will stand in the way. Our tastes may 
lie in farming, and an over-supply of farmers reported from 
Government may send us behind the counter. We may 
feel within us the capacity to accumulate millions and bounte- 
ously to scatter them abroad : matters will be so managed 
that neither our generosity nor our acquisitiveness can have 
free scope. All this, of course, on the assumption that we 
now belong to those privileged classes, the members of which 
have such really choice tastes to indulge, and who do so very 
much like to suit themselves. The chaotic independence that 
we now enjoy will vanish like a mist, replaced by an orderly 
social organisation in which individuality, trammelled in 
various ways where it is now free, will have to express itself, 
if at all, through new channels. 

And in all probabilty we shall not enjoy this condition of 
things at all. Distaste for discipline is innate in the human 
breast. We all wail in unison with the little boy in Peter 



THE CONSCIENCE OF THE FUTURE 321 

Pan, who cries, " I don't want to take my bath ! " as good 
Nana trots him sternly to the tub. Certainly, the present 
world affords an especially bad introduction to that future 
state. For never was there a period which so shrank from 
disciplines and restrictions of every kind, and so far succeeded 
in throwing them off, as the nineteenth and twentieth 
centuries. See where we stand to-day ! The Churches have 
candidly abandoned all disciplinary functions : a religion of 
good-humour has taken the place of the old religion of fear : 
nay, the horror of discipline has led to the foundation of a 
new popular faith, which regards pain, not as a task-master, 
but as an illusion. Ethical restraints, especially in the 
matter of marriage, are weakening with the religious. The 
substitution of indulgence for discipline in the education of 
children, and the triumphant march of the free elective 
system, point the same way ; while until very lately restraints 
on " individual enterprise " in the industrial sphere were 
viewed with keen suspicion. This relaxation of discipline, in 
the name of freedom and of natural good, which has been 
going on ever since the Revolutionary upheaval, has resulted in 
a curious state of things. Many a critic, from Carlyle down, 
has not hesitated to describe modern life as an organised 
anarchy. To-day, the outcry against social restraint in any 
form still rises vigorously, from dramatists and philosophers as 
well as from the man in the street, and Spencer's lugubrious 
prophecy of the bureaucratic tyranny threatened by socialism 
still finds many an echo : at the same time, he who listens can 
hear an increasing volume of voices in a different song. For 
Carlyle, with his bewildered cry, " Wanted an autocrat," was 
only the first prophet of a strong reaction. A line of thinkers 
down the decades has protested against the riot of individual- 
ism, and demanded a principle of effective authority for the 
salvation of the modern world. Here comes one of the latest, 
Mr Irving Babbitt, ably pointing out the intellectual laxity 
that has resulted from the sway of humanitarianism in its two 

phases inaugurated, so he says, by Bacon and Rousseau the 
Voi,. VII. No. 2. 21 



322 THE HIBBERT JOURNAL 

extension of knowledge and the extension of sympathy. He 
shows with convincing logic how humanitarianism slips either 
into sentimentality or into scientific accumulation, in neither 
of which is found that power to train in selection and judg- 
ment which is the basis of sound education. Mr Babbitt 
would propose to restore this decaying power by a revival of 
humanistic and classical training in schools and colleges. One 
endorses and applauds, perceiving at the same time that there 
is small chance of effectively restoring the intellectual 
disciplines in a society where the moral disciplines are under- 
mined. The educational world does but reflect in its 
tendencies the larger world without. Contemplating the 
relaxation of all effectual restraints that has gone on for over 
a hundred years, one is assured that a change more profound 
than a revival of classical studies will be needed, if the world is 
to become in the good old sense a school for character. 

Nor can this needed discipline ever be regained by mere 
revivals of any kind. History does not repeat itself. Carlyle's 
hero-autocrat will never bless our eyes again. He has gone 
with the feudal system, and it is to be feared that the classical 
curriculum has disappeared with him, to be "happy in the 
past." 

What then if we looked forward ? What if the prophesied 
tyranny of the socialist state, being fulfilled, should prove 
itself to be not curse but blessing? It is possible, at least. 
The humanitarian movement, which is surely one of the main 
currents sweeping us toward socialism, may in time become 
humane. Through all vapours of sentimentality and material- 
ism, it may flow on and out into a clearer air. Out of its 
own necessities it may generate that power to restrain, select, 
subdue, in which modern civilisation most clearly fails. The 
discipline supplied by socialism may conceivably prove to be 
that very discipline, competent to shape human life to nobler 
likeness, for which our wisest clamour ; and when the " coming 
slavery " is here, we may find in it that service which is perfect 
freedom, 



THE CONSCIENCE OF THE FUTURE 323 

But only on one condition : that this authority, with the 
discipline it entails, be the result of the general will of the 
whole enlightened community. Autocracy is one thing; 
voluntary self-control is another. Better our present chaos 
than a state without poverty or disease, established against 
the free will of its members ! A " benevolent despotism " 
imposed from outside, no matter how excellent its results, is 
repudiated by the spirit of democracy. But discipline self- 
imposed is the first requisite of noble manhood. Limit per- 
sonal independence through external tyranny of mob or Czar, 
you produce the slave ; limit it by the choice of the common 
will, you gain the only citizen who is truly free. The advance 
of civilisation is measured by its self-imposed restrictions. 
Already to-day, such restrictions for the sake of the social 
welfare are thickening on every hand. We may no longer 
spit in the street cars, 1 nor take more than a given number 
of lodgers to the cubic feet of air that we control. In countless 
matters the enlightened conscience is limiting its prerogatives, 
in that spirit of joy which transforms sacrifice from mutilation 
to redemption. 

The one chance for the well-being of the great coming 
experiment to which, apparently, we are all but committed, 
is that it shall express a general aspiration and a common 
choice. We may as well be frank. Socialism is going to mean 
a new degree of authority, not over this class or that class but 
over every last man. And the one thing that can, if we wish 
to, make this authority not only enduring but salutary and 
life-giving, will be that it is bestowed by the communal will, 
to the end of the welfare of the whole. In how many ways 
has humanity sought to achieve this welfare ! It has tried 
despotisms ; they ended in disaster : it has tried anarchies ; 
they have left us in our chains. What if the times were 
ripe to try a new way the way of illumined and reasonable 
sacrifice of individual rights to a wider good? Neither the 
Russian autocracy nor the riot of individualistic laissez-faire 

1 This is written of the United States. EDITOR. 



824 THE HIBBERT JOURNAL 

has conquered conditions under which the majority of men 
are able to attain the full stature of their manhood. But now 
democracy is for the first time coming to its own. Does it 
not whisper in our ear a new possibility a social organisa- 
tion in which equality of opportunity shall be created by the 
deliberate surrender of private privilege, and each child born 
into the world shall grow up under such discipline in modera- 
tion and selflessness as will prohibit his personal powers from 
impeding the full welfare of his fellow-men ? Surely, socialism 
so conceived may be our moral salvation. It may afford the 
God-appointed means to check the self-indulgence that ener- 
vates the modern world, and the egotism that blasts us like 
a disease. Neither reform in education nor indefinite preach- 
ing in the air is likely to produce this result or to afford the 
needed corrective. But a reorganisation of the whole basis of 
society can do it. Nor is it Utopian to believe that such 
reorganisation can be achieved, not by the self-assertion of 
the poor, but by the self-knowledge of all working together. 
To say that it is impossible for the race at large to gain 
sufficient self-control to adopt an order planned at the expense 
of "those spend-thrift liberties that waste liberty," to attain 
the most general diffusion of well-being and opportunity, is 
to despair of human nature. Let the Potter's Wheel, as 
the ages pass, twirl faster; let it mould the clay into forms 
increasingly complex, by pressure increasingly heavy, involved, 
and severe. If the vessel emerge in greater and more service- 
able beauty, the gain is clear ; and the clay will sing to the 
pressure of the wheel. 

III. 

We cannot expect, of course, that the will which creates 
the socialist order should be universal. It will suffice if it be 
as common as the will that to-day keeps honesty and decency 
as the general and outward rule in social life. One sees 
immediately that there will always be some types of people 
miserable in the socialist state. Chief among them are a 



THE CONSCIENCE OF THE FUTURE 325 

number of those who are to-day agitating most loudly for 
socialism. Your born malcontent will be extremely ill at ease 
in the social order for which he clamours, and it is amusing to 
contemplate him there ! One foresees him kicking angrily 
against the pricks, and organising reactionary movements in 
the sacred name of personal independence. The windy 
demagogue, the man of words, the restless rebel it is by a 
curious history that he is in the socialist ranks at all. For 
socialism, as we all begin to see, really means an unparalleled 
degree of law and order. Those who promote it are, though 
against their wills, the friends of law ; and Mr Chesterton's 
" Man who was Thursday " is entirely correct in suggesting 
that the Central Council of Rebels is in reality composed of 
members of the secret police. The revolt against civilisation 
during the last hundred years has had two impelling forces : 
self-assertion and self-effacement, individualism and chivalry. 
Despite the Marxian with his scorn for the second, and the 
Churchman with his distrust of the first, both are potent, 
positive, and essential. From Leopardi to Heine, to Tolstoi, 
to Ibsen, to Nietzsche ; from Mazzini to Ruskin, to Morris, to 
Jaures - - the two forces pull side by side, yoke - fellows 
looking askance each on each, but ploughing the furrow 
together. Philanthropists and revolutionists, idealists and 
materialists, socialists and anarchists, confusedly work together 
toward an unseen end. To trace the action and reaction of 
the two forces is a study in distinctions awaiting the social 
psychologist aforesaid. They are still united for attack. 
When this work is done, and the "forts of folly fall," the 
testing of the ranks will be swift and sure. Then it will be 
seen who is the true socialist, for we shall learn which man 
is really at home in the world he has evoked. Who can doubt 
that it will be he who has trained himself spiritually for the 
new order who by watchful self-control has developed the 
new social intuitions, the swift perception of that delicate 
point where the pressure of his own claims and powers might 
inflict injury rather than help on others? This is the man 



326 THE HIBBERT JOURNAL 

who will make the inner strength of the new state ; and it is 
he who will rejoice in the new order, not the impatient man 
intent on self-development who is the chosen hero of certain 
schools in letters and philosophy. We shall know then that 
the real socialist is he who has been actuated all along, not by 
egotism or the instinct of revolt, but by the resolute longing 
for a state in which each individual shall be competent to 
attain the highest point of development consistent with the 
general welfare. The barren self-assertion, the helpless and 
violent temper of rebellion, the outcry against all that checks 
private self-gratification, which for over a hundred years have 
been mistaking themselves for a passion for freedom, will find 
their logical executioner where they think to find their patron. 
Byronism and Nietzscheism will languish miserably or else, 
and quite conceivably, will form in the new socialism a 
dangerous element that will be allowed just enough freedom 
to act as safety-valve. 

But there are others besides the malcontents who are likely 
to feel painfully the gentle discipline of the socialist state. At 
a word, the pressure will probably be most severe on originality 
and self-indulgence : on the brilliant and the weak. Consider 
for a moment the probable fate of genius under socialism. 
Genius ! that erratic gift so notoriously reluctant to submit 
itself to any disciplines whatever, so confident that the needs 
of its own soul sometimes, alas ! confounded with its senses- 
are the one light by which it must walk ! Well, one does 
foresee a hard time for the artists in particular for the minor 
men, artists by temperament rather than by power. Many a 
man convinced that he is born to be a poet may die with all 
his music in him, having served the community in bitterness 
of soul as cook and bottle-washer to the end. As one contem- 
plates this elimination of minor poets, one congratulates the 
community while commiserating the singers. But what about 
the really great men ? There will be pensions, of course, and 
exemptions. The new order will be very eager to discover 
genius : as soon as a man has justified himself in its eyes it 



THE CONSCIENCE OF THE FUTURE 327 

will free him from other pursuits, bidding him paint and write 
for the rejoicing world. But will the world make its selection 
wisely ? Ah, there's the rub. It never did yet. One pictures 
Martin Tupper contentedly pouring forth platitudes on a 
pension, while John Milton writes the Paradise Lost of the 
future in odd moments, when his quota of work is done. 

Well, perhaps the epic will be none the worse for it. 
Eating one's bread with tears, and learning in suffering to 
teach in song, may help in the future as in the past to deepen 
the music. Injustice and neglect have been foster-parents of 
the muse. But of course one does believe that a mighty 
saving of creative power will be effected by the new order. 
A Thomas Chatterton will not commit suicide when that 
good day has dawned. 

For we have to remember the immense amount of social 
waste involved in the present system. When we imagine a 
time in which the majority of children will not be assigned 
before birth to an industrial slavery in which all artistic 
instincts are stifled, we see the unpredictable gain that may 
result. When we contemplate the life of the average man 
to-day, we are to think, not of the university student or the 
successful merchant but of the factory hand, or, if you will, of 
that every tenth man who, unless the social revolution hastens 
its pace, will fill a pauper's grave. Our despotisms and our 
anarchies have alike failed miserably to give this man a chance. 
After a century and a quarter of the industrial individualism 
plus political equality inaugurated with such glowing hopes, 
we face, broadly speaking, a world in bondage. And if social 
reorganisation on broad lines is called for more and more 
loudly, even at the evident cost of some surrender of private 
independence, it is from the growing conviction that such 
surrender is the price to be paid for a rich and full life for the 
majority. 

Our new hope of social welfare was not possible before the 
advent of democracy ; nor was it possible until democracy had 
had time to work for several generations as a leaven within the 



328 THE HIBBERT JOURNAL 

souls of men. For the self-control and sacrifice for which it 
calls, on the part of the strong, can find motive only in that 
intuition of the Whole which democracy brings, and which 
we feel to-day tingling in every nerve of the social body. 
Freedom ! It is indeed a holy name, in which more crimes are 
committed than those known to Madame Roland. Only to- 
day are we beginning to realise that it is a term of social rather 
than of individual import, never to be realised by the one while 
the many are still bound. True liberty is positive, not negative, 
dealing less with the removal of restriction than with the 
imparting of power. It consists, not in the licence of each 
person to indulge desire, but in the power bestowed by the 
community upon its every member to rise to the level of his 
richest capacity by living in harmony with the Whole. Of this 
freedom, Dante knew more than the schools of the Revolution ; 
for he placed it at the end, not the beginning of humanity's 
journey, and showed it to be a gift awaiting the climber at the 
summit of the mount of discipline rather than a companion of 
the pilgrim way. 

Social welfare is a wider term than personal liberty ; but it 
includes that liberty, even in the narrower sense, just as soon 
as the restrictions through which alone, apparently, it can be 
attained become the result, not of a law imposed from without, 
but of a choice from within the social structure. The joyous 
surrender of personal rights which the socialist state, in accord- 
ance with the common will, must demand from its citizens 
will be in itself the evidence of a high degree of private 
freedom. For the crowning glory and the only thorough 
proof of freedom has always been a willing submission ; and 
the " richest capacity for living in harmony with the Whole " 
may again and again prove a kenosis or self-emptying. " I will 
run the way of Thy commandments when Thou hast set 
my heart at liberty," said the psalmist. The fruit of inner 
liberty is ever obedience to law. Only he possesses who 
refrains, and the way of renunciation is always the way of 
freedom. 



THE CONSCIENCE OF THE FUTURE 329 

IV. 

And here at last we reach the heart of our subject. The 
Way of Renunciation the Way of Freedom ! How long 
religion has known this truth ! With what desperation, and 
against what heavy odds, at least in the Western world, has 
she clung to it ! Who can fail to recognise the profound 
paradox and puzzle which from the dawn of Christianity has 
weakened the religious sense of Europe, and tended to make 
the precepts of our religion food for the hypocrite or the cynic ? 
To a large extent, all that makes for the permanence and 
energy of the social structure has seemed to be the exact 
denial of all that makes for sanctity. It was not in jest but 
in earnest that we pointed out at the beginning the stress 
laid by our modern social system on the virtues that con- 
stitute practical efficiency and lead to self-regarding success. 
This emphasis is clearer and more single in an industrial 
democracy like ours than under any previous conditions ; but 
it has been prominent in the whole course of Western civilisa- 
tion. It differentiates our ethical and social conditions from 
those of the East, where these virtues have always been 
more or less at a discount. Not that the East has lacked its 
conquerors or its tyrants ; but that, in a social order at once 
less exacting and more stable, the individual, if he felt the 
craving for the religious life, could at least gratify it, torn 
by no agonising conflict between his duty to the state and 
his duty to his own soul. But how have " the pride of life, 
the tireless powers " in which the West has gloried been sus- 
tained ? Through the pushing eagerness of every individual to 
distance his fellows in the race and to achieve for himself the 
dominance of assured ownership, were it over a large kingdom 
or a small. Self-assertion has been with us more than the 
condition of personal success; it has been the oil on the 
wheels nay, we may go farther, the motive power in the whole 
social machine. The passivity of the non-resistant has been 
recognised by the thinker as a peril to social advance, or at 



330 THE HIBBERT JOURNAL 

best as innocuous only because so safely rare. A man who 
carried to their logical extreme the precepts of the Sermon on 
the Mount would, as it has frequently been pointed out, bear 
no vital relation whatever to the social Whole, or at least have 
no productive function in regard to it. 

Mercy, humility, poverty of spirit, are indeed endearing 
traits for the parasite and weakling; they may also be 
permitted to the strong man as a decorative adjunct when 
the serious business of life has been attended to. But that 
serious business means the watchful nurture of one's own 
interests, since by the sum total of such devotions equilibrium 
and progress are alike secured. 

During the Middle Ages this emphasis on the self-regard- 
ing virtues was somewhat checked by an authoritative 
hierarchy, both religious and secular, which limited the ambi- 
tion of the individual, no less than by the prominence of the 
monastic ideal as a counsel of perfection. In the modern 
world it has come to prevail all but alone. Yet, while this 
emphasis is clearer and more single to-day than ever before, 
it is worth noting that it is left far more than in the past 
without philosophical foundation. During the Middle Ages 
the world was popularly viewed as a creation of the devil 
and an enemy of the soul ; it was then natural that religious 
virtues should contribute to the destruction rather than to 
the health and permanence of the worldly order. The 
Christian, so far as practicable, withdrew from action ; the 
law of renunciation and sacrifice led too often, though with 
glorious exceptions, to social inefficiency ; and we face, look- 
ing back, the curious phenomenon of two orders confronting 
each other, in opposition not logically sustained yet always 
latent : the World, going on its ancient way of lust and 
chaffering, and Christianity, drawing its most ardent adherents 
away from Vanity Fair into the hush of an existence in which 
action was suspended and self was lost that it might find itself 
in God. 

There were perplexity and inconsistency enough in that 



THE CONSCIENCE OF THE FUTURE 331 

situation. There is a new perplexity, a new inconsistency, 
for us to face to-day. Paradox, in the relation of the Christian 
to the world, has become more and more cruel to thinking 
minds ; and the conflict between the ideals of personal holiness 
and of social efficiency has driven many to despair, more to 
denial. For the Manichaean ideal has increasingly lost hold. 
We no longer view the material universe and the structure 
of social life as a lure of the devil, but rather as a sacrament 
revealing the Divine. The true meaning of those great 
dogmas, the Incarnation and the Indwelling of the Spirit, 
begins to be perceived. They unite with the growth of the 
Higher Pantheism to destroy the mediaeval conception that 
living as a productive unit in the social whole is a necessary 
negation of the claims of God. On the contrary, we are 
learning that social well-being is a holy thing, and that so to 
shape our activities that they may minister to it is a primary 
religious duty. To restore to all men their earth-heritage has 
become a sacred aim an aim not to be attained by sporadic 
philanthropies, but by such a shaping of the social order that 
this well-being may be the product of the sum total of the 
normal activities of men. Thus the old conflict between the 
ideals that make for social permanence and those that make 
for individual salvation loses all justification ; and the paradox 
by which the virtues recognised by all Christians to be the 
highest are nevertheless seen to be so impracticable that they 
would, if universal, destroy society, appears in all its naked 
cruelty. 

But what if we were moving toward a state of things in 
which the law of individual selflessness and sacrifice were to 
become the fundamental law of social health? This, and 
nothing less, is essentially the moral transformation demanded 
by socialism. It proposes to translate into terms of social 
efficiency the deepest and most mystical law of spiritual 
being, and to achieve a true harmony between two spheres 
of life which have always appeared hopelessly incompatible. 
Renunciation ! Sacrifice ! They are a necessity of true 



332 THE HIBBERT JOURNAL 

selfhood so deep, so inward, that it can never be exhausted. 
They will find further reaches, deeper scope, when they shall 
have overcome the initial obstacle presented to their realisation 
by the present social order. But at least it will be a gain 
when we are summoned to practise them by the state, not 
as a private luxury, not as self-immolation to a Setebos, but 
in the name of the larger social self, of which the functions 
can only be performed as the individual joyously surrenders 
all claim to special privilege, and finds in self-subjection his 
true liberty. He who loses his life shall find it! Even in 
nature we begin to perceive this hidden law. We shall 
probably see it more and more clearly there as science advances. 
But it is in the life of humanity that we may look for its 
perfect triumph humanity, that has clung to it with passion 
even when it most seemed to contradict all social progress, and 
to lead to a self-centred and cloistered virtue that dwelt afar 
from the habitations of men and from all productive power. 
This law, gradually accomplishing its work in the hearts of 
men, must in due time reshape the social structure so that 
individual sin need no longer be social virtue, nor individual 
holiness, socially speaking, a negative and unfruitful source. 
That this due time is at least conceivably our own time is not 
for people to deny who have for ever on their lips the prayer, 
Thy Kingdom come on Earth. 

VIDA D. SCUDDER. 



IS THE OLD TESTAMENT A SUITABLE 
BASIS FOR MORAL INSTRUCTION? 

RIGHT REV. J. EDWARD MERCER, D.D., 

Bishop of Tasmania. 

IN the January number of the HIBBERT JOURNAL (1908) it 
was ably argued that religion is a necessary constituent in all 
education, and that educated Christendom will be satisfied with 
nothing less, as a basis for religious education, than the Scrip- 
tures of the Old and New Testaments, with or without the 
Church's interpretation of them. It is also argued that these 
Scriptures present the necessary material in a condensed form, 
that they remain as the one clear record of the Soul of a 
People, and that modern criticism, so far from destroying 
their value, shows us that we are not at the end, but at the 
beginning of their usefulness. 

With the general tenor of the propositions thus laid down 
most serious educationalists will be in sufficient accord. 
Nevertheless, the practical difficulties they involve are both 
numerous and formidable. I propose in this article to limit 
myself to a discussion of those connected with the use of the 
Old Testament as a text-book for moral instruction. 

There are many who still refuse to allow the existence of 
moral difficulties in the Old Testament. They bathe them in 
the glow of religious fervour, or dissolve them in the aqua 
fortis of an unquestioning faith. There are others who, if 
pressed, acknowledge the difficulties, but think it wiser to let 
sleeping dogs lie. And there are others who, clearly seeing 

333 



334 THE HIBBERT JOURNAL 

the difficulties, cannot bring themselves to shut their eyes to 
what are palpable breaches of the civilised moral code, not to 
speak of offences against the Christian law of love. It is, of 
course, with the doubts and perplexities of this last class that 
I propose to deal ; for I have intense sympathy with them. 
And I am bold to maintain that we assume all too easily the 
fitness of the Hebrew Scriptures to serve as a basis for moral 
instruction. 

It cannot be denied that most people have but the vaguest 
ideas of the ethical principles underlying the early stages of 
Hebrew history, and still vaguer ideas of the ethical evolution 
therein manifested. Even when we turn to the writings of 
those who should be experts in this subject, we are most 
frequently sorely disappointed. There is a painful absence of 
any broad grasp of the problems to be faced, and in its stead 
a timid and uncritical treatment of detached details. As a 
consequence, while here and there a ray of light may be thrown 
on a dark place, a rough place smoothed, or a harsh feature 
softened, the larger masses are left in the gloom of a Rem- 
brandtesque background, suggestive but illusive. I speak of 
the writings of those whose aim is constructive. As for the 
merely destructive critic, he fails to perceive, if he does not 
frankly deny, the existence of the soul of the Hebrew race, and 
he does not concern us here. 

The cause of this failure is quite plain. Those who value 
the contents of those Scriptures are afraid lest, in applying 
critical canons, they should damage the feeling of reverence for 
inspiration, or should seem to impugn the righteousness of 
God. And the unwholesome products of this timidity are no 
less self-evident. The intermittent and helpless waverings as 
to the absolute or relative value of the earlier moral codes 
have often strained the moral sense to breaking point, have 
laid the Church open to the powerful artillery of the moral 
critic, and have fostered, if they have not occasioned, periodical 
recrudescences of that fierce spirit and intolerant zeal so opposed 
to the express teaching of Christ. Witness the unconscious, 



THE O.T. AND MORAL INSTRUCTION 335 

but radical, contradiction between the Crusader's cross on his 
breast and the sword in his hand : the tortures of the Inquisi- 
tion and the fires of Smithfield : the burning of Servetus by 
Calvin : the less lovely traits in the character and conduct of 
the early Puritans and the Pilgrim Fathers : the prolonged and 
wholesale murdering of innocent women under the laws dealing 
with witchcraft : and a sad host of similar moral and religious 
tragedies which are blots on the fair escutcheon of Christendom. 
To urge caution in the use of the Old Testament as a 
moral text-book is not to lose sight of its unique revelation of 
the power that makes for righteousness, actually and con- 
tinuously moulding the ideas and ideals of a race specially en- 
dowed with a genius for spiritual things ; nor is it to deny the 
moral leadership of the Hebrews among the peoples of the 
ancient world. It is rather to draw attention to the fact that 
the various stages of ethical development therein delineated 
are marked by immaturities and crudities which, while of 
wonderful significance for a comparative study of ethics, can 
only confuse and weaken such impressions as direct instruction 
seeks to convey. And this fact assumes all the greater im- 
portance when we reflect that the moral difficulties of the Old 
Testament are by no means limited to certain episodes and 
passages which we may call classical, such as the destruction 
of the Canaanites, Deborah's praise of the treachery of Jael, 
the sacrifice of Isaac, the deception of Jacob, and Jephthah's 
vow. Ethical problems manifest themselves on almost every 
page, and are woven into the very texture of the whole. The 
narratives of ancient Israel depict the play of those natural 
impulses which predominate in the initial stages of civilisation, 
and illustrate the sway of custom, simply as custom, in scanty 
dependence on moral feeling. There followed the era of law, 
the peculiar characteristic of which, waiving critical niceties, 
may be said to be its externality ; God's commands were to be 
obeyed, not for their moral content, but because of the danger 
involved in disobedience. The people were in the iron grasp 
of legalised custom and tradition. A pictorial ritual enhanced 



886 THE HIBBERT JOURNAL 

the authority of what might otherwise have been abstractions, 
beyond the reach of immature spiritual apprehension. Even 
the " collective " punishments, which seem to us so wasteful 
and so sweeping, had their due part to play. However 
arbitrary the rules, however unintentional the violation of 
them, the one thing necessary was to inculcate respect for a 
settled constitution. For in the lack of such respect the 
nation could not survive in the struggle for existence. 

The Law was thus a schoolmaster to bring into subjection 
undisciplined desires and passions ; but its rigid externality 
made its yoke intolerable. The nobler spirits were bound to 
rebel. On one hand emerged the notable school of thinkers 
whose ethical conceptions were embodied in the " Wisdom " 
literature. The will of God was no longer regarded as simply 
and purely arbitrary. The fear of the Lord was no longer 
mere fear of a Being able to reward and punish. A higher 
moral elevation was attained. The divine laws were recognised 
as general principles on which the creation was governed, and 
obedience to them was seen to bring men into harmony with 
the supreme wisdom. But in spite of this distinct advance, 
the general spirit of the time was cold and calculating ; the 
fire of inspiration burnt low. Even pessimism reared its 
fearsome head. 

More significant than these, emerged the finer spirits who 
opened a way to true moral freedom. The prophets, urged 
by a growing sense of the worth of the individual, and a 
correlative sense of moral responsibility, burst through the 
bonds of legalism and ceremonialism. And thus it came to 
pass that Isaiah declared his scorn for externalism, and Ezekiel 
proclaimed, with the zeal begotten of new insight, how that 
"the soul that sinneth, it shall die." But the bonds were 
not altogether broken. The blade and ear were there, but 
not the full corn in the ear. The spirit of the prophets had to 
find its highest realisation in the spirit of Christ. 

The relapse into legalism, and its crystallisation in the 
later Pharisaism, take us somewhat beyond the bounds of the 



THE O.T. AND MORAL INSTRUCTION 337 

Old Testament problems, and do not, therefore, require more 
than mere mention. But enough has been said to prove that 
the ethical facts of ancient Hebrew history afford striking 
illustrations of the nature and trend of what is known as 
Progressive Morality. We can see that the earlier stages 
are preparatory for the later; and these later, again, pre- 
paratory for the spiritualised ethics of the New Testament ; 
and that each is immature in comparison with its successor. 
These things being so, does it not follow that those who 
would use the older Scriptures as a basis for moral education 
have before them a task as delicate as it is complicated ? 
Doubtless the possibilities of the case for moral science are 
great all the greater because of the thoroughness demanded 
by the complexity. But must not careful reservations be 
made before we explicitly maintain that this heterogeneous 
material, containing elements so crude and contradictory, is 
fitted for laying the foundations of Christian character? 
Granted that in proportion as the material is digested and 
systematised the greater will be the sphere of its usefulness 
and influence, we have to take things as they are. And can 
we expect that the developing moral faculties will be best 
nourished on precepts, ideals, and histories, which are still 
so perplexing to the most advanced students, which risk a 
confusion of moral issues, and which may even prepare the 
way for moral reactions? 

Let us go into further detail. And be it noted, first of all, 
that to deprecate the use of the Old Testament as a basis for 
direct moral teaching is not to deprecate the use of an an- 
thology from that marvellously varied collection of writings. 
To assert that these scriptures do not contain passages almost 
perfect in matter, form, and tone, would be a gratuitous 
absurdity. A selection of gems could be made which would 
be worthy in every way to stand alongside of the material 
furnished by the New Testament. But I do not think that 
the majority of those who uphold the use of the Old Testa- 
ment as a text-book of morals would be content with a selec- 

VOL. VII. No. 2. 22 



338 THE HIBBERT JOURNAL 

tion. No doubt they do, in actual practice, select ; but they 
would justify themselves, not on any general principle affect 
ing their choice, but on the necessities of time and opportunity. 
They would insist that the Jewish Canon must be treated as a 
whole ; and this is what I venture to dispute. Again, many 
passages are quietly passed over even by those who most 
keenly champion the use of the whole. But tacit negation, 
with no recognised principle behind it, save a general observ- 
ance of decency, is totally distinct from positive selection, such 
as I here advocate, based on a broad survey of the moral 
principles involved, and with a definite aim before it. We 
have plain proof of lack of principle in the fact that the 
Church of England, impelled by tradition, still orders the 
reading of passages which in any other connection would be 
sternly repressed. 

Let us note, in the second place, that Jesus Christ Himself 
dealt very freely with the Old Testament. He referred to it 
as bearing testimony to His work and His Person. Moreover, 
He often counselled His disciples to study it closely. But He 
was speaking, we must remember, to those who had no other 
scriptures, and whose minds were steeped in its language and 
leading conceptions ; whereas we have the Christian Canon, 
with its more perfect moralising of all motives and ideals. 
They were just emerging from legalism ; whereas we have had 
nineteen centuries in which to imbibe and expand the new law 
of love. And even at the beginning of those nineteen centuries, 
a disciple, quoting from the Old Testament, could incur the 
rebuke, " Ye know not what spirit ye are of." We find, also, 
that in numerous and vital cases Jesus Christ made it clear 
that He regarded much of the Old Testament as being quite 
out of harmony with His own ideas of justice and goodness. 
He not merely abrogated the sayings of the men of old time, 
He condemned them. He proclaimed a kingdom which should 
grow by love, not by force. He broke down barriers of 
exclusiveness which even the prophets had left standing, and 
gave His life to establish a universal Brotherhood. And even 



THE O.T. AND MORAL INSTRUCTION 889 

when not condemning, He often referred to the Old Testament 
to show its incompleteness, to contrast it with His own 
teaching. The Sermon on the Mount takes the place of the 
Old Law, not as ignoring it, but as superseding it. It gives 
us the supreme sanction for holding to the doctrines of pro- 
gressive morality. And it justifies us in relegating the Old 
Testament, as a whole, to the secondary position of a manual 
of comparative ethics essential, indeed, for the full under- 
standing of that which succeeded it, but not essential as a 
basis for the direct and positive teaching of the Christian code. 
This is said, of course, with the reservation contained in the 
preceding paragraph. 

But some may object that I have conjured up imaginary 
difficulties, and that we may trust to the moral forces now at 
work to interpret and correct the imperfections of the earlier 
codes. And to some extent this is undoubtedly the case. 
But making full allowance on this score, I can see dangers 
ahead similar to those experienced in the past. Let us 
remember, for example, how mightily Luther strove to resus- 
citate the spirit of primitive Christianity, and yet how the Old 
Testament blazed out in his denunciations of those poor 
misguided and misgoverned peasants, whom he had at first 
encouraged, but whom he unsparingly denounced when they 
went further than he intended. He tells the princes that 
they are commanded by the Gospel (sic /), so long as the blood 
flows in their veins, to slay such folk. " A rebel is outlawed 
by God and Kaiser. Therefore who can, and will, first 
slaughter such a man does right well ; since upon such a 
common rebel, every man alike is judge and executioner. 
Therefore, who can, shall here openly or secretly, smite, 
slaughter, and stab." " O Lord God," he cries, " when such 
spirit is in the peasants, it is high time that they were 
slaughtered like mad dogs." Do we condemn Luther for 
these denunciations ? In a degree, most decidedly. For 
although his environment was exceptional, and explains 
much, we cannot help feeling that his anger would have 



340 THE HIBBERT JOURNAL 

taken a worthier form had he worked his way to sounder and 
more consistent views on the moral problems of the Old 
Testament. And Luther's days are ominously near, in senti- 
ment as in date, to our own ! The fierce spirit still lingers as 
an element in our composite nature, ready to show itself on 
strangely small provocation. Moreover, a dangerous alliance 
is springing into existence between this age-old fierceness and 
the cold, inhuman teachings of the materialistic evolutionist. 
The chosen people becomes the selected people. Hence much 
of the apathy with which we regard the drastic treatment of 
uncivilised tribes by Christian nations. Hence much of the 
half-sympathetic acquiescence in the sight of Christendom 
increasingly arming itself to the teeth for aggression as well 
as for defence. It is not long since the pulpits of England 
resounded with defences of the slave trade. 

But the tendency to relapse into the lower morality of the 
older codes, and to confuse the moral issues, is seen in less 
salient forms than those just mentioned. We need not go 
into the question how far certain modern Puritan ideals are 
tinged with Old Testament fierceness. There is simpler and 
clearer evidence at hand. Take the fact that the imprecatory 
psalms still form a recognised and recurrent part of public 
worship. There are some who are beginning to be restive 
under the infliction ; but the multitude are apathetic, and no 
inconsiderable number are eager advocates for the continuance 
of the present system. Or consider a special instance from 
these psalms. One of the sweetest and most pathetic elegies 
in any language concludes with the strange beatitude 
" Blessed shall he be that taketh thy children, and dasheth 
them against the stones." Evidently the psalmist had not 
brought the law forbidding murder into any vital connection 
with his desire for revenge. We can understand him even 
sympathise with him in his glowing zeal for his people and 
his royal city. But when our own great-grandparents wanted 
a metrical version of the psalms, we should have anticipated a 
desire to throw a veil over the terrible intensity of the stern 



THE O.T. AND MORAL INSTRUCTION 341 

patriot. Instead of this we find their chosen poet exulting in 
the chance of lurid colouring, and turning the Beatus into a 
Ter beatus. 






" Thrice blest, who, with just rage possest, 
Shall snatch thy children from the breast, 
And, deaf to all the parents' moans, 
Shall dash their heads against the stones." 



Such lucubrations were fairly harmless, and the singers of 
them lived in a very different world from that which they 
imagined they thus perpetuated. Still, there is food for 
reflection in the fact that they sang them at all. And this is 
all the more significant when we realise that so few of the 
modern popular exegetes and commentators make any pre- 
tence of coming to grips with the live issues. Even the gentle, 
loving soul of a Keble could find nothing more to say of such 
passages than that " the Holy Ghost puts words into our 
mouth which we should have been afraid to have spoken of 
ourselves." No, the dangers are not past, while the true 
position and function of the Old Testament are still so widely 
misunderstood. 

The momentum of old dogmas and traditions carries us 
on in spite of ourselves. The true character of the situation 
will emerge more clearly if we consider its parallel in a sphere 
which sufficiently excludes theological prejudice. I suppose 
there are few Christian educationalists who do not sympathise 
with Plato in his emphatic repudiation of certain elements in 
Greek myth and poetry regarded as material for the education 
of the good citizen. He condemned, from this standpoint, all 
stories which tended to lower the more spiritual standard to 
which his race had attained in their conceptions of what was 
highest and best in gods and men. God must always be 
presented as good, and the author of good. The heroes must 
be types of obedience to moral principle. In brief, the moral 
influences brought to bear in education must be as pure and 
elevated as the conditions will allow. Now I venture to hold 
that all this applies much more directly to the Old Testament 



342 THE HIBBERT JOURNAL 

than many would imagine. Take, as an obvious example, the 
conception of God which prevails in large sections of its varied 
contents. God is continuously represented as speaking and 
acting in ways which offend our moral sense. He issues 
commands to slaughter even the babes unborn. Many of His 
punishments are wholesale and capricious. He gives His 
formal approval of slavery, allowing little children to be 
bought and sold as well as adults. He provides that Jewish 
slaves shall be more kindly treated than other slaves. He 
gives the strange law that a man shall not be punished for 
beating his slave to death, if the poor assaulted wretch does 
not die out of hand, but lingers for a day or two ; and adds 
the still stranger reason, that the slave is his owner's money. 
Such are some of the more striking instances from what 
constitutes a fairly homogeneous whole. 

How shall we explain such views of God as were held by 
the Israelite of old ? The question is not an easy one. Recall 
Hobbes' teaching, " That which God does is made just by 
His doing it; just, I say, in Him, though not always in 
us. ... Power irresistible justifies all actions, really and 
properly, in whomsoever it is found. . . . God cannot sin, 
because His doing a thing makes it just .... to say that 
God can so order the world, as a sin may be necessarily caused 
thereby in a man, I do not see how it is any dishonour to 
Him." Will it be held that such a line of defence is impossible 
for a Christian ? I most emphatically concur. But I cannot 
forget Dean Mansel and Sir William Hamilton. If I turn 
to so sound and approved a moralist as Bishop Butler, I find 
that though he does not explicitly allow that the Hebrew 
ethical standard was inferior to ours (Analogy, pt. ii. ch. iii.), 
he nevertheless elects to defend the position entirely from the 
side of the divine will, arguing that God has the right to 
destroy life, and to use man as an instrument to effect His 
purposes. And I find a similar line of defence adopted by 
an apologist in a book authorised and issued by a Society 
which is thoroughly representative of the Church of England. 



THE O.T. AND MORAL INSTRUCTION 348 

The line of defence taken is that the Hebrews, in their 
destruction of the Canaanites, acted simply as destroying or 
punitive agencies in God's hand, like the storm, the pestilence, 
or the earthquake. 

The objections to such a view are surely overwhelming, 
and justify the famous outburst of John Stuart Mill when 
asked to attribute to God acts which our highest human 
morality does not sanction. " Whatever power such a being 
may have over me, there is one thing which he shall not do : 
he shall not compel me to worship him." How can we 
worship such a God ? For, guided by the best we know, 
we simply refuse to believe that the moral Governor of the 
universe could issue such commands now, in the present day. 
Further, were such commands issued, we should disregard 
them, denying them to be divine. And the moral ground 
for such refusal is plain for all to see. When man acts as an 
agent, he acts as a conscious agent. He is a moral being. 
And thus he differs by a whole heaven of difference from the 
unconscious storm or pestilence. God would not be Himself, 
we feel, were He to coerce or trample on the freedom of a 
moral agent, even though that agent be one so feeble and 
erring as mortal man. 

If it is contended that a higher form of exegesis, founded 
on a more enlightened criticism, will remove these difficulties, 
I cannot altogether agree. For the whole drama of human 
history has unrolled itself under the supreme guidance of the 
moral Governor of the universe ; and we are thus driven to ask 
why morality should have passed through these lower stages 
on the road to the higher. No doubt we here touch a problem 
of cosmic significance but we touch it in a form, it seems to 
me, quite unnecessarily acute when we use the Old Testament 
as a text-book of ethics. At a later period the student of 
ethics may grapple with these great difficulties, and may reach 
some theory of progressive morality which shall enable him to 
vindicate the divine righteousness without stifling the prompt- 
ings of a healthy moral judgment. I believe that such a 



344 THE HIBBERT JOURNAL 

vindication is possible, proceeding on lines suggested by St 
Augustine. The start would be from an explicit recognition 
of the fact that the moral standard of the Hebrews had not 
risen to the level at which they would rebel against such 
sentiments and conceptions. The strict intuitionalist doctrine 
concerning conscience would have to be frankly abandoned. 
But why bring such advanced reasonings into an elementary 
text-book ? And even granting the soundness of the reason- 
ings, have we yet applied them with sufficient lucidity and 
thoroughness to the Hebrew scriptures to warrant our general 
use of these for instruction in fundamentals ? 

Guiding ourselves yet once again by Plato's doctrines, let 
us glance at the Greek drama, that mirror held to nature which 
reflects, in all their essential features, the same problems as 
the Old Testament the clashing of varying and discordant 
ethical codes, and the unravelling of moral perplexities. Let 
us take a typical example. The Electro, of Euripides was 
performed recently in London on a splendid scale, and Canon 
Scott Holland has given a vivid account which I most gladly 
quote. " Tremendous ! " he writes ; " yet what is it which 
holds us back in the play, and forbids us to yield ourselves to 
its appeal ? The truth is that the collision between the ex- 
quisite modernity of the spirit in the play and the brutal 
savagery of the story is too violent. The story belongs to the 
heroics of barbaric passion. We are face to face with the 
simplicities of elemental man, as we encounter them, say, in 
the Jewish psalms of retaliation and denunciation. Man is 
stripped bare ; his naked being exhibits the play of every 
instinct, unqualified and untempered. . . . But, then, here is 
Euripides, flinging into the savage and heroic setting all that 
comes from delicate and subtle thought, playing hither and 
thither round spiritual problems, the touch of fine emotion ; 
the thrill of sensitive souls ; the movement of quivering 
wonder and pity and tenderness ; the lissome interchange of 
antithetical sympathies, the quick questioning of a conscience 
that is alive to the conflicts of varying motives and appeals. 



THE O.T. AND MORAL INSTRUCTION 345 

How can all this consort with the scene on which it is to play 
its part? If we yield to the spell, then the play becomes 
horrible, bloody, gross, improbable." 

Does not this powerfully drawn contrast suggest parallels 
only too obvious in the results of our attempts to weld 
together the Old Testament and the New to form a basis for 
direct teaching of the fundamentals of morality ? Many of the 
passages in the " First Lessons " clash well-nigh insupportably 
with those in the " Second Lessons." We are still slaves to 
imperfect theories and worn-out preconceptions. It is bad 
enough to raise such moral discords in acts of public worship. 
It is still worse to set vibrating such moral discords in what 
Plato calls " the tender souls of children," which, " like blocks 
of wax," are ready to take any impression, and which are so 
quickly deformed and distorted. Nay, we would, by thus 
acting, come perilously near to incurring the censure of Him 
who sternly warned against harming those " tender souls," of 
whom He declared that of such is, not the gloomy wrath and 
fierceness of the old order, but the joy, and brightness, and 
love of the Kingdom of Heaven. 

J. E. TASMANIA. 



THE CENTRAL PROBLEM OF THE 

INTERNATIONAL CONGRESS ON 

MORAL EDUCATION. 

PROFESSOR J. H. MUIRHEAD. 

THE significance of the International Congress on Moral 
Education held at the University of London at the end of 
September is sufficiently indicated by the fact that delegates 
had been sent to it by no fewer than fifteen Governments, 
some of them thinkers and writers of world-wide reputation 
in their own fields. During the four days of the Congress 
it is not too much to say that every aspect of education 
was touched upon. The committee had the happy idea 
of inviting a number of papers on the different subjects 
put down for discussion, causing them to be printed both 
in extenso and in condensed form, circulated among the 
members of the Congress, and taken as read. The result was 
that the speeches which were delivered had been prepared in 
full view of all the contributions before the meeting, or were 
the result of the actual collision of opinion in the heat of 
discussion. The proceedings thus acquired a life and the con- 
victions that were expressed an impressiveness that are rare 
in such conferences. It is hardly conceivable that an attentive 
listener should have been present at any of the sessions without 
having his views enlarged and modified on the subject under 
discussion. Few, probably, returned from the Congress to their 
work, whether as teachers, educational writers, or adminis- 
trators, without feeling how much was to be said for views and 

346 



MORAL EDUCATION 347 

methods not their own, and on the other hand how little they 
had understood of the real inwardness of those they had 
themselves accepted. 

Even with much larger space than I have at my disposal 
1 should find it difficult to give any idea of the issues that 
were raised and the conclusions that were sometimes pointed 
to and sometimes were not. I do not propose to try, but 
to assume that tht> readers of the HIBBERT JOURNAL will 
be chiefly interested in the discussion which occupied the 
central place in the programme the Relation of Religious 
to Moral Education. Even here I wish to confine myself to 
one point, to me the central one. No less than thirteen 
papers had been written for the session. The best-known 
among the writers the Rev. Hon. Edward Lyttelton, Dr 
Gow, Fathers Maher and Sydney F. Smith, the Rev. Morris 
Joseph, and Mrs Bryant together with the presence on the 
platform of two Bishops, seemed sufficient guarantee that the 
discussion would move within the limits of orthodoxy and 
be confined to practical questions. As it happened, the 
Chairman was misled by this array and by the superficial 
trend of the majority of the papers, and sought to confine the 
discussion within these limits. It was like Mrs Partington's 
well-meant endeavour. Men had not come from the Lycees 
of France, from the Universities and Government Depart- 
ments of Germany and Japan, to discuss the moral efficacy 
of the reading of the Greek Testament as a substitute for 
systematic religious and moral instruction. 

It was clear that the real issue before the Congress was 
not as to the desirability and practicality of religious teaching, 
but as to the possibility of finding any meaning or relevance 
in the ordinary religious ideas that could be acknowledged by 
teachers and educationists who were in touch with the modern 
spirit. When an hour later they left the hall, there were few, 
whatever their sympathies, who did not feel that, had this 
ruling held, a unique opportunity would have been missed 
of having the two great ideals of education, which, for the 



348 THE HIBBERT JOURNAL 

last century, have slowly been recognising each other as 
mortal foes, clearly set forth by some of the ablest of their 
respective supporters. There was a dramatic element in the 
session which sharpened the antithesis. For the first half 
of the time it seemed as though the issue would be 
confined to differences in doctrinal emphasis and in peda- 
gogical methods. The wider question was first broached by 
M. Ferdinand Buisson of Paris, who in a short, courageous 
paper made it clear that the leading French educationists had 
long ceased to regard religion as any part of the content of 
moral education or as having any vital relation to it. Religion 
is to receive a formal acknowledgment. Children must be 
taught "the respect due to the idea of religion and the 
tolerance due to all its forms without exception. But for the 
rest they are to be taught that the chief mode of honouring 
God consists in each doing his duty according to his conscience 
and his reason." After his speech, everyone present seemed 
to feel that in the conflict of ideals he had succeeded in 
indicating, the whole problem of modern education was con- 
tained as in a nutshell: all other conflicts were trivial in 
comparison. It was not that the supporters of each of these 
ideals had not known of the existence of the other, but that 
the authority and sincerity with which the speeches were 
delivered on both sides, the touch of personal conviction in 
men of international reputation, arrested attention and seemed 
to give a depth and a meaning to the several contentions 
which they had not before possessed. 

On the one side, which, for want of a better name, may 
be called the Positivist, there was the emphasis on the con- 
crete, the connection of conduct with social, industrial, civic, 
and political well-being. In character lie the issues of life for 
individual communities and humanity at large. There was, 
further, the uncompromising claim for freedom of conscience, 
the insistence on intellectual sincerity as the very fountain- 
head of moral rectitude. No individual or nation can under- 
value veracity and continue to count as a member of a spiritual 



MORAL EDUCATION 349 

community. As compared with the interests here involved, 
theologies and doctrinal differences, if advocated in themselves, 
are as unsubstantial shadows ; while if they are turned, as 
too commonly they are, into a ground of intolerance and 
superstition, or, worse still, of acquiescence in existing 
social conditions, they are the most serious obstacle against 
which progressive forces have to contend. 

Just here the other side made itself heard. All this is an 
accident of particular forms of religion. What religion stands 
for is not any particular system of dogma or discipline, but the 
indefeasible claim for the inwardness of morality, for the re- 
cognition of the eternal distinction between the natural and 
the spiritual, and, going along with this, of the reality of sin and 
the necessity of rising, through a grace which is not our own, 
from mere natural goodness of heart to a vivid sense of the de- 
mand that our souls' deeper attachments make upon us. True, 
this implies the belief in the reality of these attachments, but 
this itself is part of the witness of consciousness. It is popularly 
called faith in God, but its essence is not the belief in anything 
supernatural and transcendental, but the sense of a wider 
fellowship than that represented by any individual society or 
even group or succession of societies upon this planet the 
conviction that, in ways we are far from completely under- 
standing, the real underlying forces of the world are on the 
side of our best aspirations, that the ideal is the real, and is 
most real where it is most true to itself as an ideal. Nor is 
this faith mere matter of speculation, without effect on moral 
conduct. It is put on a false footing, compromised and forfeited 
rather than fortified by the advocacy of those who seek in it a 
supernatural sanction for moral conduct. But this ought not 
to create prejudice or blind us to its real influence in purifying 
and refining character and in furnishing the natural breath of 
spiritual graces humility, fortitude, resignation, hope, trust, 
joy which live with difficulty in the more rarefied atmosphere 
of Positivist belief. 

Are these two ideals really incompatible ? Or rather, 



350 THE HIBBERT JOURNAL 

since neither of them can really afford to ignore or repudiate 
the other, is it impossible to find a background of reasoned 
belief that will make it possible to unite them in a new and 
satisfying synthesis ? This was the question that was inevitably 
suggested by this remarkable debate, which in a moment was 
seen to have grown from parochial to universal interest. 

The aim of this short article, written at the request of the 
Editor, has been to try to fix the main issue that was presented 
to the Congress, the point at which its discussions touched 
the fundamental problems of our time. Having done this, 
I might close. Perhaps it would be wiser to do so. But as 
I ventured at the time to point the contrast and indicate what 
I believed to be the line of reconciliation, I may perhaps 
be permitted to add one or two sentences, chiefly of quotation, 
from what I then said. 

1. Positivism in all its forms rests ultimately on the antithesis 
between man and nature and the limitation of our insight to 
the " human synthesis." In view of our widening knowledge 
of the nature and meaning of the world in which we live, it 
is not likely long to remain possible to maintain the rigidity 
of this distinction. More and more we are coming to realise 
here, through the study of the forces operative in civilisation ; 
there, through the study of the relation between mind and 
body, the organic and the inorganic ; here, again, through the 
study of the human mind itself in its operations as will and 
intelligence the essential relativity of man and nature, the 
underlying unity of the material and the spiritual. 

2. Going along with this, and indeed a corollary from it, 
is the growing recognition of the priority of spirit a priority 
which, to be realised, has to assert itself through the control 
and the transformation of the natural into the form of the 
spiritual. Human life at its best consists in no easy-going 
acceptance of natural law, or acquiescence in forms of life 
and conduct, social or individual, that are fixed for us by 
inheritance or external circumstances. It consists rather in 



MORAL EDUCATION 351 

the continuous effort to realise, under the forms of time, 
aspirations that carry us beyond time. 

3. Such a view, when we come to realise what is involved 
in it, is likely to carry us equally beyond anything which has 
hitherto been regarded as adequate religious teaching, and be- 
yond the current ideal of secular education. So far from being 
a support to morality, much that goes by the name of religious 
instruction will be seen to cut at the roots of what is best in 
it. On the other hand, it will be seen that current Positivism 
requires to be freed from what is merely local and temporary 
in it and supplemented in the light of a larger philosophy. 

The new religious thought will appropriate with gratitude 
what Positivism has so nobly taught, but will seek in 
addition to raise this teaching to a higher power by its faith 
in the ideals of humanity as something to which the universe 
itself is pledged. If it comes with no addition to the content 
of morality, no " duties to God " which are not also duties to 
ourselves and our fellow-men, religion as above defined has the 
power of giving a deeper significance to conduct by connecting 
its laws with the general purposes of the universe so far as 
we can understand them. Following on this, religion brings 
a new form of emotion in the confidence it inspires in the 
ultimate triumph of the good. " A man's confidence in 
himself," said Hegel, " is much the same as his confidence in 
the universe and in God," and what is true of the indi- 
vidual is true of humanity. Without such confidence, it is 
difficult to see with what ultimate convincingness appeal can 
be made to the ideals of humanity ; with it, we are beginning 
to see how a new inspiration can be brought to the work of 
moral education as the development in souls, prepared by their 
own deepest instincts to respond, of an attitude of mind which 
shall be true not only to their own manhood and womanhood 
in what is seen and temporal, but to that which is unseen and 
eternal in the world at large. 

J. H. MUIRHEAD. 

BIRMINGHAM. 



JESUS OR CHRIST? 

AN APPEAL FOR CONSISTENCY. 

THE REV. R. ROBERTS, 

Congregational Minister ; late Chairman of the Bradford Education Committee. 

RECENT criticism of the New Testament has gathered around 
Jesus Christ and the testimony of its various documents to 
His person and work. This has characterised not merely the 
technically called Evangelical churches, but has also marked 
large sections of the Roman obedience on the extreme right 
and influential scholars in the Unitarian church on the extreme 
left. For the scholarly divines and the devotional lay minds 
who have felt the force of this great current of Western 
thought in the sphere of religion, it is scarcely an exaggera- 
tion to say that Jesus Christ is Christianity. The several 
parts of the New Testament are in the main narratives of 
His supposed life and teaching, or theories of various kinds 
built upon them. But neither the narratives nor the theories 
are Jesus Christ. 

With certain reservations, it may be said that the group of 
doctrines known as " Evangelicalism " is the common property 
of Western Christendom. In developing its thought "back 
to Christ," Evangelicalism has found itself driven to make 
stupendous claims on behalf of Jesus. It is not possible, 
within the compass of this article, to set forth those claims 
with any approach to fulness, nor to state fully the numerous 
and grave misgivings which they create for the modern mind. 
But on the threshold of even such treatment as is here possible 

352 



r l 1 



JESUS OR CHRIST? 353 



one finds himself beset by an initial difficulty. Perhaps 1 can 
best express that difficulty in the form of the following ques- 
tions : Are the claims to be presently set forth made on 
behalf of a spiritual " Ideal " to which we may provisionally 
apply the word " Christ," or are they predicated of Jesus ? 
The apologists do not frankly face these questions. The 
reluctance to do so renders it difficult to make any pertinent 
criticism of the claims. For it may easily turn out that in- 
sistence on limitations of knowledge, restrictions of outlook, 
evasions of issues, and disillusionments of experience true 
enough of an historic Jesus may not be wholly relevant to 
a spiritual " Christ Ideal " expanding and enriching through 
the ages into " the Christ that is to be." To one who was 
the "fulness of Godhead" bodily expressed, "Very God of 
Very God,*' they could not be attributed at all, without such 
a strain as would crack the sinews of language, reducing the 
sequences of speech to incoherences of thought. 

The vast sweep of these claims becomes apparent in the 
following citations from writers who have laid the Christian 
world under a heavy obligation by their elevation of thought 
and spirit, the chastened scholarship, the fine yet reasoned 
reverence of their work. 1 select first a somewhat abstract 
statement of the " Modernist " position in the Roman 
communion : 

"The whole doctrine of Christ's KCVWO-IS, or self-emptying, can be ex- 
plained in a minimising way almost fatal to devotion, and calculated to rob 
the Incarnation of all its helpfulness by leaving the ordinary mind with 
something perilously near the phantasmal Christ of the Docetans. Christ, 
we are truly taught to believe, laid aside by a free act all those prerogatives 
which were His birthright as the God-man, that He might not be better off 
than we who have to win our share in that glory through humiliation and 
suffering, that He might be a High Priest touched with a feeling for our 
infirmities, tempted as we in all points, sin only excepted" (Through Scylla and 
Charybdis, p. 98, the Rev. George Tyrrell). 

The learned Catholic scholar above cited has his own 
quarrel with the terms of this statement. But his uneasiness 
as to its phrasing does not touch the purpose for which it is 
here quoted, the point of which is to show that Jesus and 

VOL. VII. No. % 28 



354 THE HIBBERT JOURNAL 

Christ are terms used interchangeably ; that the " self-empty- 
ing" of the God-man has no meaning apart from a historic 
life conditioned by the limitations of ordinary humanity ; and 
that He, in His humiliation, felt the poignancy of all such 
temptations as assault our frail nature, sin only excepted. 

Coming now to the Anglican church, the opinion of the 
late revered Bishop Westcott will be accepted as representative 
of a large school of thought within and without his own com- 
munion. On the significance of Jesus for the Christian life 
and doctrine he says : 

"We look back indeed for a moment upon the long line of witnesses 
whose works, on which we have entered, attest the efficacy of His unfailing 
Presence, but then we look away from all else (d^optovres) to Jesus the leader 
and perfecter of faith, who in His humanity met every temptation which can 
assail us and crowned with sovereign victory the force which He offers for our 
support" (Christus Consummator, p. 156). 

And still more pointedly in the same volume : 

" The Gospel of Christ Incarnate, the Gospel of the Holy Trinity in the 
terms of human life, which we have to announce covers every imaginable fact 
of life to the end of time, and is new now as it has been new in all the past, 
new in its power and new in its meaning, while the world lasts" (Christus 
Consummator, p. 171). 

Passing now to those churches known as Nonconformist, 
Principal Fairbairn, writing of the " historical Christ," says : 

" The Person that literature felt to be its loftiest ideal, philosophy conceived 
as its highest personality, criticism as its supreme problem, theology as its 
fundamental datum, religion as its cardinal necessity" (Christ in Modern 
Theology, p. 294). 

Twelve years of building construction separate the work 
containing this sentence from the next quotation to be cited. 
I select a somewhat more detailed paragraph from The Ascent 
through Christ, by the Rev. Principal E. Griffith Jones. On 
the last page of this very interesting volume we find the 
following passage : 

" We do our Master little honour when we place Him among a group of 
teachers competing for the acceptance of men. He is not one of many 
founders of religions. He is the source and fountain of all, in so far as they 
have caught a prophetic glimpse of His truth, and anticipated something of 
His spirit, and given a scattered hint here and there of His secret. He is the 
truth, the type, the saving grace, of which they faintly and vaguely dreamed ; 



JESUS OR CHRIST? 355 

the Desire of all Nations, the Crown and Essence of Humanity, the Saviour of 
the World, who by the loftiness of His teaching, the beauty of His character, 
the sufficiency of His atoning sacrifice, is able to save to the uttermost all who 
will come to Him and trust in Him " (The Ascent through Christ). 

The final quotation to be made will represent a scholarly 
and conservative school of Unitarian thought. The Rev. Dr 
James Drummond was selected to deliver the last of the well- 
known series of Hibbert Lectures, and from it I take the 
following passage : 

" The Word made flesh discloses to us, not some particular truth or require- 
ment, but the very spirit and character of God, so far as we are able to 
apprehend it; for the Divine Thought is God Himself passing into self- 
manifestation, just as our speech is our own personality entering into com- 
munication with others" (Hibbert Lecture, Via, Veritas, Vita, p. 312). 

" Word " and " Thought " are both implied in the Greek 
" Logos." On the Evangelical theory, the " flesh " was Jesus, 
not Christ. If I understand Dr Drurnmond's position aright, 
whether it was as " Divine Word " or as " Divine Thought " 
it was still " God Himself" who dwelt in the fleshly tabernacle 
known as Jesus. But on both theories there is a localisation 
of the Infinite, a differentiated moment in eternity, a limita- 
tion within the conditions of a fleeting human organism of the 
Omnipotent, Omniscient, and Perfect God. If Jesus was the 
" Word made Flesh," and if this same " Word " or, to meet 
Dr Drummond's position, * Thought " was " God Himself," 
then it would seem difficult to resist the inference that Jesus 
was God. Such a position involves all the claims which the 
quotations now cited have made on behalf of Jesus. Dr 
Drummond does not indeed draw out the implications of the 
position with the startling vividness which we find in Principals 
Fairbairn and Jones. The great Unitarian scholar is mainly 
concerned with the ethical and spiritual content. It is within 
the sphere of morals he is anxious to affirm the peerless 
position of the " Word made flesh," and it is notable that 
nearly throughout the lecture the position thus claimed is 
associated with Christ. Jesus, as distinct from Christ, makes 
but an occasional appearance in the lecture-room of this 



356 THE HIBBERT JOURNAL 

" Hibbert " lecturer. Yet it cannot but be that His presence 
is felt in every phase of the lecture, for it is only in and through 
" the flesh " that the Word becomes the subject of history and 
enters into relationship with men. When we remember the 
very rich content of the Greek " Logos," and that " the Divine 
Thought is God Himself," it seems impossible to limit His 
presence and potency within the sphere with which the 
lecturer is dealing. God is not to be so confined. No part 
of the universe is without Him, and thus it appears to me 
that the two distinguished Congregational scholars have but 
drawn out to their logical conclusions ideas implicit in Dr 
Drummond's Unitarian position. The claims thus made on 
behalf of Jesus are what I have ventured to describe them, 
"stupendous." When their character, scope, and magnitude 
are considered in the light of New Testament documents and 
in that of the secular literature nearest to New Testament 
times, a disturbing sense of disproportion between the claims 
made and the historical evidence legitimately producible in 
support of them grows upon the mind. 

In dealing with the evidence which is submitted, it cannot 
be overlooked that statements made as to Jesus cannot 
properly be admitted as evidence for Christ. Dr Percy 
Gardner, as will be presently shown, has observed the distinc- 
tion here made. But in the current literature, in the 
hymnology, and in almost all sermons the rule is to take 
statements as to Jesus and apply them to Christ. A remark- 
able example of this is found in Dr Fairbairn's Christ in 
Modern Theology, where (p. 353) passages relating to Jesus 
in the footnote are adduced in the text as evidence for Christ. 
The illegitimacy of this process becomes apparent when the 
differing character of the two words is borne in mind, and 
when the historic process of the passage of Jesus into Christ 
becomes more clearly understood. This is one of the many 
reasons why increasing numbers of people find their confidence 
in the very bases of the Evangelical faith most seriously 
disturbed. 



JESUS OR CHRIST? 357 

The silence of non- Christian literature as to Jesus has more 
significance than is usually assigned to it. The point, however, 
cannot be developed here. 

When we turn to the New Testament, we have a body of 
literature whose evidential value has been, and still is, the 
riddle of Christendom. Close and careful reading of its 
documents reduces our knowledge of the actual facts of the 
life of Jesus to a small, and, it must be added, a narrowing 
compass. Beyond the narrative of birth and infancy and one 
incident in the boyhood, the Synoptists give us only detached 
fragments of events in one year of His life. The Johannine 
narrative extends the chronology so as to cover portions of 
perhaps the last three years. Criticism, of course, greatly 
reduces the value of this face view of the story. Following it, 
we pass through narrowing areas of admissible statement, and, 
guided by Dr Schmiedel's " pillar," pass ages, till we reach the 
position of Professor Khaltoff, from which the figure of the 
historic Jesus has completely vanished. 

So far, I have dealt only with the alleged events of the 
life. With the exceptions named, they seem to have dis- 
appeared from Apostolic literature. To Apostolic literature 
the Jesus of the Gospels, apart from the incidents mentioned, 
is unknown. But the case as to the alleged teaching is still 
more disturbing. On the modern Evangelical theory, this 
teaching is the whole groundwork of Christian theology 
and institutions. Moreover, in the contentions l which, it is 
said, distressed the early churches, the teaching, if it then 
existed as we have it, would have been the first thing to be 
produced, and in nearly the whole of the Pauline disputa- 
tions its production would have been decisive. Yet the fact 
is that, with one exception, we have no single statement of 
the teaching produced in Jesus' own words. That alleged 

1 Paul contended for the freedom of the spirit against the bondage of the 
letter. The teaching on the Sabbath attributed to Jesus, especially the text, 
" The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath/' would have been 
decisive. 



358 THE HIBBERT JOURNAL 

exception is the Eucharistic formula in Corinthians. Con- 
sidering the immense stress laid by modern theological 
criticism on the authority of Jesus in the sphere of morals 
and religion, the fact that the Christian documents chrono- 
logically nearest to His times do not consider it worth while 
to quote His words is not a little disconcerting. I do not wish 
to forget the limitations attaching to arguments from silence. 
But I may remark that they are more strictly applicable 
to ordinary literature, written under the normal conditions 
of humanity and for the common purposes of literature and 
life. This, however, is not the case with New Testament 
literature. It purports, so it is affirmed, to be an exposition 
of the life, work, and teaching of One who came to reveal 
the Father, to give the world assurance of new truth, and 
to lay upon mankind the authority of a new, universal, and 
eternally binding moral code. These claims may or may 
not have lain latent in the " sayings " on which they are said 
to be based, and it may be also that the historic Christology 
of Christendom is but their formal expression. Be that as it 
may, they are part of the literary output of the times and 
countries which produced them, and alike in their noblest 
passages and in their legendary parts they carry the impress 
of their " place of origin." 

They are in harmony with the intellectual climate of that 
part and age of the world. An instructed Jew would be 
familiar with the thought in almost every passage attributed 
to Jesus. A cultivated Roman versed in the literature of 
the Graeco- Roman world would find no difficulty in narratives 
of blind men restored to sight, of lame men regaining the 
use of their limbs, of divine heroes born of a virgin mother, 
and of dead men restored to life. These were some of the 
normal products of that mental climate. But the New 
Testament marvels have outlived that climate, and, like an 
Alpine plant occasionally found on Yorkshire moors, they 
live on in new and strange surroundings. But they did not 
and they could not awaken the many-sided reflections in 



JESUS OR CHRIST? 359 

apostolic, patristic, or scholastic times they inevitably do 
to-day ; and statements which passed comparatively un- 
challenged in pre-evolution days find themselves now in an 
atmosphere quick with eager questionings. In the larger, 
wider intellectual world of to-day these mementoes of man's 
mental past startle the reader. If he is presented with a 
narrative of the life and teaching of One "in whom all the 
fulness of the Godhead dwelt bodily," he rightly asks for 
credentials which would never have occurred to a Paul or a 
Plutarch. And yet of that One who came to be the inex- 
haustible and final revelation of the infinite God nay, who 
was Himself " Very God of Very God " we have only these 
meagre, these elusive and tantalising reports. This is enough, 
I submit, to justify the serious disquietude of the modern mind 
on this part of the New Testament problem. 

There are, however, other aspects of the same problem 
which the widened horizons of the modern world compel us 
to recognise. Possession by evil spirits was a form of belief 
natural to the culture-level at which the Jews of Jesus' day 
stood. They believed that these evil spirits entered into the 
human organism, and that their presence was the cause of 
physical and mental derangements. Jesus seems to have 
shared these opinions. Even more embarrassing to the 
modern mind is His apparent acquiescence in the popular 
belief that they could be expelled by exorcism, and that He 
Himself practised the art so effectually that it has maintained 
its place in the Christian Church to this day. Then again, 
the world has outlasted the anticipations of its duration which 
coloured at least the later phases of the Galilean idyll, and 
which impart a sombre tinge to the whole circle of Apostolic 
and Apocalyptic thought. Every day on the brink of opened 
graves we still repeat stately and solemn words which were 
written when the world was supposed to be hurrying to its 
catastrophic close. But the prophets of dissolution are dead, 
and still the old world spins its way "down the ringing 
grooves of change." And even as it has belied New Testa- 



360 THE HIBBERT JOURNAL 

ment beliefs as to its speedy end, so also it has belied the 
beliefs of the same volume as to its beginning. Mankind did 
not begin with a perfect Adam. Womankind did not emerge 
from the extracted rib of the first man. Suffering did not 
enter into the world, nor did the tragedy of death cast its 
dark shadow on humanity as the result of "man's first dis- 
obedience and the fruit of that forbidden tree," partaken in an 
idyllic Eden in the morning of time. These are fairy tales, 
and they have " faded into the light of common day." But 
they have left their mark on, even if they have not largely 
shaped, gospel and epistle. In a society which has done with 
fairy tales as to its own origin we have to ask : What are 
we to make of a New Testament which is said to be the last 
word of knowledge on the tremendous questions of life and 
destiny, and which yet lends its sanction to these fables of 
the morning ? The writer of the great " Quadrilateral " 
epistles shared these views. If the narrative is to be trusted, 
Jesus himself accepted many of them. And the stupendous 
claims made on His behalf by modern Evangelicals compel 
me to put the question : Are these fables things which we 
should expect from One represented to be " the Desire of all 
Nations, the Crown and Essence of Humanity, the Saviour of 
the World " ? 

Man, however, has other interests than those of religion. 
From the dawn of intelligence he has observed the world in 
which he finds himself, and gradually he has come to realise 
that some reasoned theory of it and its forces is a necessity of 
his nature. Science is the outcome of this craving for know- 
ledge. Through the aeons of his evolving history he has been 
haunted by an ideal, other and fairer than the actual around 
him. He has felt an imperious necessity to express these 
haunting visions, and Art has grown out of his efforts. He 
early found himself one of a group. Father and mother, 
sister, brother, wife, and children were around him. Outside 
his own group were other groups similarly related, and to 
these he had to adjust himself in some rude order. Here was 



JESUS OR CHRIST? 361 

ic beginning of political institutions, and advancing civilisa- 
tion has meant the slow adaptation of these institutions to a 
gradually expanding consciousness of social needs and order. 
I cannot further develop these points. But, in view of the 
claims with which I am dealing, I must ask : Can we con- 
ceive of Jesus believing in and understanding the Copernican 
system or following the reasonings of Newton ? Is it possible 
to think of Him following the dialectic of Aristotle or enter- 
ing into the enjoyment of the art of Pheidias ? Political 
science is a necessity of civilisation. But what proof is there 
in the evidence before us that Jesus had any conception of 
society as the product of human reason dealing with the facts 
of associated experience? If Jesus was man only, these 
questions are irrelevant. But if He was God, they raise, for 
me, an insoluble difficulty. 

Jesus Christ, we are told, is the Universal King. In this 
phrase, Jesus and Christ have become identified. Jesus 
imparts to the Christ His own historicity and character ; 
Christ assimilates Jesus. The two make one Person. The 
worlds of science and of art wait on His inspiration. Principal 
Fairbairn informs us, in words already quoted, that all the 
highest activities of the race receive their inspiration from 
Him : He is the origin and fount of all our thinking and 
doing ; His Person co-ordinates the otherwise aimless impulses 
of humanity ; He alone gives meaning to philosophy, direction 
and purpose to history. This is the " discovery " which, 
Principal Fairbairn says, has been made in these recent years, 
and that not by any designed and meditated counsel on the 
part of representative spirits in these departments of human 
activity. Rather it is, that these have become conscious of 
what was the result of their unpremeditated and manifold 
labours, and through that awakened consciousness the 
" historical Christ " has come to His own. The throne of the 
universe is no longer vacant. On it sits the crowned King 
of men, "Jesus Christ, the same yesterday, to-day, and for 
ever " ; and all the saints, sages, poets, and artists of all the 



TIIK HIBBKKT JOURNAL 

earth and all the ages are bidden "to lay their trophies at 
His feet and crown Him Lord of all." 

Yet when we look carefully at. the achiev rmnifs of the 
human mind we speedily become aware that without the aid 
of a continuous miracle the suppositions of this theory could 
not .be complied with. Humanity had achieved much before 
Jesus was born. If He alone is the inspiration ;md energising 
life of humanity, it is pertinent to ask how came we to 
have religions, literatures, art, sciences, philosophies, polities, 
and industries, all the contents of many-sided civilisations, 
thousands of years before He was born? 

We know too that claims similar to these have been put 
forward on behalf of other Saviour-Gods among all the great 
races of the past. Every type of civilisation has had its 
Saviour-God. The believers in these knew no world outside 
their own, and they fondly yet, sincerely and earnestly believed 
that the Saviour-God who had done so much for them was 
able to save to the uttermost. And, truth to say, when I)r 
rail-bairn and his disciples come to scrutinise the claims and 
characters of the Saviour-Gods of other religions they make 
very short work of the evidence of miracle and history with 
which such claims are associated. They apply to them the 
canons by which the children of this scientific age of the West 
judge of evidence, and the claims vanish at the touch of that 
Ithuricl spear. Jesus knew nothing of the world of Greek 
thought. There is no proof that He was aware of thai great 
and real religious reconstruction which found expression in the 
drama of /Ksehylus, or of those rcachings after a deeper 
spiritual realism breathing through the " Mysteries " of later 
(.reck and Itoman thought,. Had He been acquainted with 
the writings of Plato, what, marvellous confirmations of His 
own highest teachings would He not have found in them '( Is 
it conceivable that if he had known of Socrates and Pericles 
He would have dismissed them to outer darkness as mere 
heathens '( 'The vast and hoary religious systems of flic 
farther Kasl lay outside- His range of vision ; their greal saints 



.IKS US OH CHHIST' ;t<; 

were wholly unknown to Him. His world, on the evidence 

before us, was that of Palestine, its problems those of ( Galilee 
and Jerusalem, and its literatim 1 that of bis own nation. 

If from the realm of knowledge we pass l.o that of morals, 
we meet with sayings attributed to Jesus which raise disturb 
ing reflections. Matthew's version of the Sermon on the 
Mount is regarded as the high-water mark of Christ ian ethics. 

Yet if we are to regard these " sayings " as regulative words 

for the guidance of personal character or social order we 
cannot help being embarrassed. Almsgiving implies a failure 
of social justice. Hut the "sayings contain no recognition of 
that, now widely accepted fact; while the prohibition to have 
any regard to rewards from men does not apply l.o the " leather 
which seeth in secret," whose reward will begixen "openly" 
and may be, apparently, expected. No condemnation is 
passed on the harsh and cruel law of debtor and creditor, nor 
would efforts for legal reform find any encouragement from 
the words attributed to the Master here. ( )n non resistance 
and oath-Taking the rule allnbuled l.o Jesus is absolute. Yet, 
as a. whole, Christendom has openly violated it throughout its 
history. His most distinguished followers, popes and bishops, 
have waged wars and consecrated battleships; and the ex 
islcnce of Christian armies proves that Jesus has been unable 
to get His own followers l.o obey His rule. His leaching on 
divorce 1 recognises the husband's right to accuse, judge, 
condemn, and dismiss the wife ; while the wife, having no 
such rights as against, her husband or ex-en over her own 
children, is left the helpless victim of the husbands caprice. 
There is no recognition of adultery on the part of the husband 
as a ground for divorce! which the wile might, urge, while tin- 
right of the husband to decide these matters himself without 
reference; to any constituted law courts strikes the modem 

1 M.il I,., <-. xix., vv. .'{ f) ; M/irk, c. x., vv. 11-12; Luke, c. xv., v. I H. 
Karly llc|)rr w pr;icl ice ;r, l.o in.irn.i"< .md divorce w:r; pioh.iMy '.Naped |>y 
Arab cir.l.om. I )< ul economy introduced a milder pi.iehc., ;md in M;d.i< In 
f:iirrr l.rcal mcnl. |o I. lie wile i . iirj-ed. |', u l I .Im HI." lioiil. ItiMiral lime;. I I,, nj,dll, 
dl I, lie wife l.o :;ue for divorce wa:; not, t eeo;. ni :, d. 



3(54 THE HIBBERT JOURNAL 

mind as callous and iniquitous to the last degree. The teach- 
ing is governed throughout by an admission of the iniquitous 
principle of sex -inferiority as against woman, and let it be 
remembered this principle has inflicted infinite suffering on 
half of the human race. Yet Jesus sanctions this sex-sub- 
ordination, and His ideas rule Christendom to this day. 
English law has now decreed that divorced persons may 
legitimately re-marry, and in this particular it has presumed 
to improve on the ethics of Jesus as to the marriage relation- 
ship. We are awaking, somewhat slowly it is true, but still 
awaking, to the enormous iniquity involved in this sex- 
inferiority ; and the measure of our awaking is the measure 
of our departure from this part of the Sermon on the 
Mount. 

Provident regard for the future is utterly condemned. 
" Take no thought for the morrow " is an absolute injunction. 
But all our Insurance Societies are avowedly founded on the 
opposite of this. Friendly, Co-operative, and Trade Union 
Societies are organised on the principle condemned in this 
sermon, and Christian governments prepare their national 
budgets at least twelve months in advance. The principle of 
some of these instructions may have its value as an ideal. But 
as regulative ideas for the government of personal conduct and 
associated life they have been useless and they have been 
mischievous. 

Even more mischievous has been the sanction which 
persecution has drawn from Jesus' reported attitude to 
possession by evil spirits. As I am here dealing with ethical 
limitations, I must return to this subject and must press the 
question : Why did Jesus permit people to believe that evil 
spirits were the cause of disease, and that He could and did 
exorcise them ? 

It is certain that He was mistaken alike in His diagnosis 
and in His remedy, and the mistake becomes tragical when we 
remember that His example has been made to justify some of 
the most atrocious cruelties in history. If He did not know 



JESUS OR CHRIST? 365 

that possession by evil spirits as understood by His country- 
men was an error, then His knowledge was at fault. If He 
did know, and also knew the use that would be made of His 
example for more than a thousand years after His death, then 
His acquiescence shows a moral limitation more embarrassing 
than the intellectual one. Dr Fairbairn, in a perfect tour de 
force of intellectual subtlety, argues that Christ had limita- 
tions of knowledge. Writing of this in Christ in Modern 
Theology (p. 353), he says: 

" If He knows as God while He speaks as man, then His speech is not true 
to His knowledge, and within Him a bewildering struggle must ever proceed 
to speak as He seems and not as He is." 

' ' If He had such knowledge, how could He remain silent as He faced human 
ignorance and saw reason wearied with the burden of all its unintelligible 
mysteries ? If men could believe that once there lived on this earth One who 
had all the knowledge of God yet declined to turn any part of it into science 
for man, would they not feel their faith in His goodness taxed beyond 
endurance ?" 

Let us apply these thoughts to the case of possession by 
evil spirits. It will be noticed that Dr Fairbairn speaks of 
Christ, but I may take it that Jesus is meant. Mark reports 
(i. 23-26) : 

" And there was in their synagogue a man with an unclean spirit ; and he 
cried out, saying, Let us alone ; what have we to do with thee, thou Jesus of 
Nazareth ? Art thou come to destroy us ? I know thee who thou art, the 
Holy One of God. And Jesus rebuked him, saying, Hold thy peace, and 
come out of him. And when the unclean spirit had torn him, and cried with 
a loud voice, he came out of him." 

Here is acquiescence in the animistic theory of disease, and 
an exercise of exorcism in which the people apparently 
thoroughly believed. Now I ask, Did Jesus "know as 
God " and " speak as man " in this instance ? If He was God, 
He must have known the people's opinion was an error, and 
an error too the theory that He had cast an evil spirit out of 
this man. What are we to think of God, who permits such 
things and becomes a party to this exorcism ? If He did not 
know that this was an error, then His knowledge was at fault, 
and what are we to think of a God with limited knowledge ? 
Dr Fairbairn and his followers admit these limitations of 



366 THE HIBBERT JOURNAL 

knowledge while yet claiming that this admittedly limited 
Personality was at the same time " Very God of Very God." 
These, however, are not merely intellectual limitations. There 
are also ethical limitations involved, and they touch on the 
theory of sinlessness. In the case before us Jesus permitted 
the people to believe that which was not true. 

If He was God, He knew that their belief in obsession was 
an error ; He must have known that after ages would quote 
His example as sanction for superstition and cruelty. We are 
therefore driven to the conclusion that " One who had all the 
knowledge of God declined to turn any part of it into science 
for man " in this instance, and thus allowed humanity to drift 
for more than a thousand years through the night of ignorance 
and cruelty. In a mere man this ethical limitation would be a 
sin. Is it otherwise in One who is said to be God ? 

These considerations seem to prove that modern Evan- 
gelicals, many of the " New Theologians," and not a few 
conservative Unitarians are in difficulties with their idea of 
Jesus Christ. Jesus limits and localises Christ ; Christ extin- 
guishes Jesus. Dr Fairbairn tells us (Christ in Modern 
Theology, p. 352) that " the terms under which Christ lived 
His life were those of our common non-miraculous humanity. 
We know no other. To be perfect and whole man must 
mean that as regards whatever is proper to manhood He is 
man and not something else." But it presently appears that 
He is something else, for though (Christ in Modern 
Theology, p. 355) "the normal manhood has its home in 
Judaea and its history written by the Evangelists," " the super- 
natural Person has no home, lives through all time, acts 
on and in all mankind." To me this seems "to say and 
straight unsay " in the same breath, and makes me feel that 
in theology English words do not convey their common 
meaning. Principal Griffith Jones, too, writes of Jesus Christ : 
"He Himself was the subject of a spiritual evolution" (The 
Ascent through Christ, p. 332). I am not sure that I know 
what a spiritual evolution is, but perhaps I put no strain on 



JESUS OR CHRIST? 367 

the word when I say that it implies the passage from a less 
developed to a more developed state. If so, there was a 
moment when Jesus Christ was less than God, and a subse- 
quent moment when he was more of God. But this implies 
imperfection and limitation, with a gradual emergence from 
their shadows, and I must admit that I can attach no mean- 
ing to a limited God emerging slowly from imperfection and 
limitation. Nor is that all. Does " spiritual evolution " 
imply that the full and perfect type lies at the beginning of 
the process? As usually understood, an evolutionary pro- 
cess starts from an undeveloped cell, and by the pressure of 
environing forces reaches the more fully developed stage. 
"Spiritual evolution" reverses this process. It places the 
developed stage the " Christ " at the beginning, and two 
thousand years of evolution have only secured us partial 
realisations of what the Christ was at the start. And yet it 
is this same Christ who is continually growing. 

Dr Percy Gardner, in A Historic View of the New 
Testament, Lecture III., writes quite frankly : 

" The more closely we examine the documents of early Christianity, the 
more fully do we acquiesce in the dictum of Dr Edersheim that the materials 
for a life of Jesus in any objective sense do not exist. It will probably always 
remain an impossibility to set forth even a brief narrative of the Founder's 
life which history can accept as demonstrated fact. Even the chronological 
skeleton of such a life cannot be sketched with certainty." 

" I endeavour in these lectures to observe a distinction very conducive to 
clearness of thought. In speaking of the earthly life of the Master, I call 
Him, with the Evangelists, Jesus ; in speaking of the exalted Head of the 
Christian Society, I use with Paul the term Christ. In cases where the 
meaning is between these two, the phrase Jesus Christ is applicable." 

But the eminent scholars with whom I am dealing habitu- 
ally quote words and actions attributed to Jesus and apply 
them to Christ. They thus gain for the mystical and spiritual 
Christ that objectivity which, assuming His historicity, belongs 
properly only to Jesus. This process seems to me wholly 
illegitimate. I want to put this matter quite as clearly and 
yet as reverently as I can, for it is the very heart of the 
disturbance which the modern mind feels in presence of the 



368 THE HIBBERT JOURNAL 

enormous claims made on behalf of Jesus. If Jesus was one 
of, or if He even was Himself, the highest and best in " the 
goodly fellowship of the prophets," then that He should be 
found subject to the intellectual, ethical, and emotional limita- 
tions of an Isaiah or an Amos would not diminish our obliga- 
tions to Him or abate by one iota our reverence for His 
character and work. But when we are told He is the universal 
King, the full and final perfection of humanity's reach, the 
Divine Exemplar, towards whose far off, infinitely distant 
perfection humanity must aspire and toil through the illimitable 
ages of the future, then the limitations of outlook, evasions 
of issues, disillusionments of experience shown in the Gospels 
assume an altogether different aspect. 

I will take the risk of much ridicule by saying frankly that 
the " historical Christ," as used by the apologists, is a phrase 
which embarrasses me. If it means an enriching and expand- 
ing " Ideal " to which history bears its witness, and from the 
hope inspired by which humanity may draw encouragement 
and strength in its conflict with ignorance and wrong, I, for 
one, will subscribe myself a believer. I admit the " Ideal " 
has had a history, and that in this sense it may well be 
described as historical. But I do not think this is at all what 
the eminent scholars I have been dealing with mean. They 
habitually quote as divinely decisive, words and actions attri- 
buted to Jesus of Nazareth. This conveys to me the impression 
that they believe Jesus was God. Yet almost every chapter of 
the Gospels bears testimony to the limitations within which 
Jesus lived and wrought. And though the physical limitations 
are by now freely admitted even by conservative scholars, the 
political, economic, social, intellectual, and ethical limitations 
are no less apparent. Dr Drummond tells us that the Divine 
Thought was "God Himself passing into self-manifestation." 
But when the position is even thus stated it compels us to ask, 
Did the " Divine Thought " give us the passages about woman 
and her treatment reported in that " Sermon " which is the 
admitted bed-rock of Christian ethics ? Did " God Himself" 



JESUS OR CHRIST? 369 

permit people to believe that exorcism was successfully per- 
formed ? If so, there was Divine sanction given to the practice 
of the art through the Christian centuries, to its retention to 
this day by the Catholic Church, and to the nameless barbarities 
inflicted on the most helpless of mankind through the long 
night of the " ages of faith." Even Dr J. Estlin Carpenter 
tells us, " He (Jesus) was obliged to use the forms of thought 
provided by his age, and they were inadequate to the greatness 
of his ideas. His principles far transcended the moulds which 
the time provided " ( The First Three Gospels, p. 349, People's 
Edition). But did Jesus' proclamation of the Fatherhood of 
God " far transcend " what may be found in many a passage of 
Seneca ? What was there in " the forms of thought provided 
by his age" to prevent Him from condemning the fiscal 
oppressions and land monopolies of His time ? The Hebrew 
prophets before Him had done so in no measured speech. 
Why did He not do so ? Are we to account for this silence 
on the plea urged by a recent anonymous but able writer 
( The Creed of Buddha) for the silence of the Indian saint ? 

Though much poetry has been expended upon it, I cannot 
understand what is meant by an " Imperfect God." Nor do 
I find any real assistance when homely English is exchanged 
for ambitious Greek, and scholars speak of a " Kenosis " and 
of a " Kenotic theory " involving real limitations in the Infinite 
and Omniscient God. The " emptying " of the Infinite God, 
whether in Greek or in English, is a process which conveys 
to me no intelligible meaning. Identifying Jesus with Christ, 
they make God a Being who is omnipotent, yet limited in 
power ; omniscient, yet defective in knowledge ; infinitely 
good, yet One who declines " to turn any part of His know- 
ledge as God into science for man." This seems to me to 
be language which stultifies itself. It would be an abuse 
of language to say that it deals with a mystery. It is flat 
contradiction. 

R. ROBERTS. 

BRADFORD. 
VOL. VII. No. 2. 24 



THE 

MESSAGE OF MODERN MATHEMATICS 
TO THEOLOGY. 



CASSIUS J. KEYSER, Ph.D., 

Adrain Professor of Mathematics, Columbia University, New York. 

IN the course of a recent l lecture dealing with Mathematics 
regarded as a distinctive type of thought and with its relations 
to other modes and forms of philosophic and scientific activity, 
I ventured to say : " I do not believe that the declined estate 
of Theology is destined to be permanent. The present is but 
an interregnum in her reign, and her fallen days will have an 
end. She has been deposed mainly because she has not seen 
fit to avail herself promptly and fully of the dispensations of 
advancing knowledge. The aims, however, of the ancient 
mistress are as high as ever, and when she shall have made 
good her present lack of modern education and learned to 
extend a generous and eager hospitality to modern light, she 
will reascend and will occupy with dignity as of yore an 
exalted place in the ascending scale of human interests and the 
esteem of enlightened men. And Mathematics, by the inmost 
character of her being, is specially qualified, I believe, to assist 
in the restoration." 

That judgment, if it be sound, indicates an extremely 
important office of Mathematics. My belief that it is sound, 

1 Mathematics, University Press, Columbia University, New York. 

370 



MATHEMATICS AND THEOLOGY 371 

my conviction that mathematics, over and above her humbler 
role as a metrical and computatory art, over and above her 
unrivalled value as a standard of exactitude and as an instru- 
ment in every field of experimental and observational research, 
even beyond her justly famed disciplinary and emancipating 
power, releasing the faculties from the fickle dominion of sense 
by winning their allegiance to the things of the spirit, inuring 
them to the austerities of reason, the stern demands of rigorous 
thought, giving the mental enlargement, the peaceful per- 
spective, the poise and the elevation that come at length from 
continued contemplation of the universe under the aspects of 
the infinite and the eternal my conviction that above and 
beyond these services, which by common consent of the 
competent are peculiarly her own, Mathematics will yet further 
demonstrate her Human significance by the shedding of light, 
more and more copious as the years go by, on ultimate 
problems of Philosophy and Theology, is not a passing fancy 
or a momentary whim. Whether mistaken or not, it is at all 
events the product of growth, slowly come to maturity, 
steadily deepened and confirmed throughout more than a score 
of years devoted to the study and the teaching of the science, 
with an eye to ascertaining its rightful place in the hierarchy 
of Knowledges, and for the most part in an atmosphere quick 
with the mingled interests and liberalising presence of nearly 
every variety of academic and scientific life. 

Nevertheless I have to own that, by virtue of considerations 
without any bearing whatever on the merits of the subject, I 
enter on the present undertaking only after long hesitation 
and with no little misgiving. For how shall one, it may be 
asked, who is no theologian, contrive to address himself to a 
question of Theology, and that in terms of Mathematics, 
acceptably to readers who in their turn may promptly protest 
that they are not mathematicians? Yet I believe that a 
little reflection will readily reduce the immediate shock of 
the seeming double absurdity, and will discover, at least 
in the possibilities of the enterprise, a sufficient measure 



372 THE HIBBERT JOURNAL 

of justification. I am indeed far from being a theologian, 
and can assert no other title to be heard in theological 
discussion than such a very defective one as may be derived 
from having, in my earlier and more expectant years, 
listened attentively to some hundreds of sermons, from 
having diligently read a few theological works, and from 
having reflected a little, not without some temperamental 
interest in the themes but all too desultorily, upon the great 
questions that so persistently attend the recurrent sense of the 
world's mystery and wait upon the leisure hour and the pensive 
mood. It must be conceded, too, that the subject does not 
admit of acceptable presentation to one who is not willing to 
bring to its consideration a little patience and penetration, and 
such measure, I do not say of mathematical technique but of 
mathematical spirit, as may properly be regarded as an essential 
qualification for aspiring to acquaintanceship with certain of 
the higher achievements of modern thought. That there are 
many who, albeit they are not familiar with the technique of 
mathematics nor even with the more accessible of the world- 
illuming concepts that have come to the science in recent 
times, possess nevertheless the requisite spirit, patience, and 
penetration, I do not doubt. Finally, if 1 shall not be able, 
even with their co-operation, to bear the contemplated message 
home to the understanding, and yet may hope to show the 
possibility of such a service and be the means of inciting some 
one who is both theologian and mathematician to render it to 
those who are neither, I am well prepared to count the lesser 
privilege a happy fortune. 

As a precaution against the bare possibility of creating, 
however unwittingly, and therefore of having to disappoint, 
over-sanguine expectations, I hope it is unnecessary to dis- 
claim the slightest intention of attempting to furnish anything 
like a universal resolvent for theological difficulties. Certain 
questions concerning the reality of God, concerning the ulti- 
mate consistence of the attributes commonly ascribed to such 
a Being, questions of Evil, of Freedom, of Immortality, and 



MATHEMATICS AND THEOLOGY 373 

of other great matters that so easily triumphed over the 
sanguine dialectic of the Ancient World and contrived to 
baffle with equal ease the subtle and persistent genius of the 
Middle Age, not even the adventurous spirit of Modern 
Mathesis and Modern Science may confidently assail. One 
need not have " passed on life's highway the stone that marks 
the highest point " ere he learns to be content with less, much 
less, than the full measure of intellectual conquest dreamed of 
in youth. Not complete solutions, not final answers to the 
deepest questionings of the spirit, but ever-increasing illumina- 
tion of them, felt accessions to the sustaining sense of their 
significance, the acquisition of fresh view -points and new 
perspectives, the advancement, in a word, and multiplication 
of insight and vision such are the reasonable expectations, 
the precious fruits, the ample rewards of serious Speculation. 

The answer of Laplace to Napoleon's question, why he 
had not in his Mecanique Celeste mentioned the name of God, 
is familiar to all : " Sir, I had no need of that hypothesis." 
Not so generally known, I believe, but equally brilliant, was 
the instant response of Lagrange on hearing from the Emperor 
prompt report of the memorable conversation : " Nevertheless 
that is an hypothesis that accounts for many things." 

Nothing is easier than to miss the point of these immortal 
sayings, so mutually antagonistic do they seem at first in the 
respects alike of temper and of sense, so resembling the sudden 
sabre-thrust and counter-thrust of battle. Yet they do not 
involve even the slightest element of disagreement. Neither of 
them affirms or implies denial of the assertion or of the implica- 
tions of the other. Their semblance of mutual opposition is 
pure illusion, due to the dramatic character of the situation and 
a certain contrast and dissonance of sound. It entirely dis- 
appears on closer examination, and the two speeches stand 
forth in their proper character as felicitous statements of fact, 
being at the same time in point of form clear tokens of the 
scientific temper common to their immortal authors. Is there, 
then, in Laplace's mot no ground for imputing irreverence ? 



374 THE HIBBERT JOURNAL 

And is there none in that of Lagrange for the ascription to 
it of immanent piety ? None whatever. It would be foolish 
to assert that the scientific and religious tempers are identical, 
or that the presence of one of them implies that of the other. 
It may be that the distinction between them is radical and 
that they are essentially independent. But, as endowments of 
spirit, they are not incompatible ; and everyone who will may 
know that they do in fact often coexist, not only in ordinary 
men, but as the examples of a Leonardo da Vinci, a Pascal, 
a Spinoza, a Riemann, a Newton sufficiently show in the 
most illustrious personalities as well. Whether such a 
union was actually realised in either or neither or both of 
the renowned savants whose words are here under considera- 
tion, it is aside from my present purpose to inquire. Suffice 
it to point out that, as an obvious matter of sound sense and 
logic, any principle of criticism or interpretation that might 
be invoked or invented to justify the imputation of irreverence, 
impiety, or lack of veneration in the dictum of Laplace, must 
equally avail to discover in that of Lagrange corresponding 
want of scientific temper, and such a verdict, as everyone 
knows, would be in the teeth of fact. It is easy to imagine 
that Laplace, at the close of his immortal work, might, like 
Newton, have discharged for a time the mood essential to its 
production, given himself to leisured contemplation of the 
wondrous cosmic visions gained in years of analytic toil, and 
that, thus receptively musing on the mighty mechanism of the 
stellar universe its unfathomable deeps, the immeasurable 
energies of swift-revolving worlds of flame, the all-pervasive 
order, the silent reign throughout of majestic law he might 
have felt a reverent sense of admiration akin to religious awe, 
and again like Newton have owned in words that such 
unity and perfection betoken the dominion of a Supreme 
Ruler and Lord of all. Had he thus chosen to signalise 
the triumphant end of many years of scientific labour by 
some expression of belief in a divine source and ruler of a 
universe whose profounder beauties he had been enabled to 



MATHEMATICS AND THEOLOGY ;375 

behold and disclose, the testimony could not but seem fitting 
to everyone, and would be especially grateful to those fortunate 
souls who see in every great display of power a witness to 
omnipotence, in every striking manifestation of natural law 
an evidence of divine decree, in every nobler scene of beauty 
a token of divine perfection. But and this is the important 
point such an expression of belief, however profound and 
genuine, however creditable to the great astronomer in his 
character as a man, would not have been in any sense a 
constituent of the Mecanique Celeste, neither a postulate nor 
a theorem, no integrant part whatever of the great description, 
but only an after-effect, an epiphenomenon, a note of venera- 
tion evoked by subsequent recall and contemplation of the 
celestial scene described. Nor could such a proclamation, 
whether made at the beginning, in mid-course, or after the 
end of the work, have added a jot to its validity or its value 
as a work of science. No defect of fact or of logic could have 
been thus avoided, palliated, or cured, and no merit improved. 
Had some soldier of Euclid's time demanded of the illustrious 
geometrician why he had not in the Elements made mention 
of God, doubtless the wit provoked but yesterday by the 
challenge of Napoleon's question had framed itself in Greek 
two thousand years before. Or does anyone imagine that 
that imperishable work stateliest among the edifices upreared 
by the scientific genius of the ancient world could have 
been improved by adding to its underlying postulates the 
statement, There is a God? If one asks, for example, why 
planetary paths are elliptic, or why the earth is flattened at 
the poles, and receives for answer that there is a God and He 
so wills, the answer may indeed be quite correct, yet one who 
should seriously offer it as scientific would seem less logical 
than pathological, less like a Newton, Laplace, or Lagrange 
than like a fool. The resolute attempt of Science to explain 
the universe in terms of Mechanics cannot be furthered by the 
postulation of a God ; it would be abandoned thereby ; for 
one thing is certain : God, if God there be, is no machine. 



376 THE HIBBERT JOURNAL 

And so Laplace's mot was more than justified : not only had 
he " no need of that hypothesis," but, his problem being one 
of mechanics, he could not, without stultifying himself, have 
even pretended to use it. 

" Nevertheless that is an hypothesis that accounts for many 
things," and one of these whether it may be otherwise ex- 
plained or not is the fact that, while Science herself, the 
pulley-lever kind, by the avowed terms and definition of her 
aim and undertaking, is, once for all and finally, atheistic, 
Scientific Man is not. For many a one, even the hardiest, of 
the kind unless indeed cut off before the mellowing touch 
of pensive years can ripen Knowledge into Wisdom comes 
sooner or later to perceive, at all events to feel, that the 
mechanistic hypothesis, fruitful and wide-reaching as it is, yet 
cannot embrace the whole of life, can give no adequate account 
of the finer elements of "man's unconquerable mind," its 
radiance and joy, its conscience and love, its holy aspirations, 
holds out no promise to spiritual yearnings, makes no answer 
to the deepest appeals of the human soul ; and so, under the 
chastening influences of disappointment, increasingly awake to 
the subtler claims, the higher appetences, of his being, he 
comes, reluctantly perhaps, slowly it may be and late in life, 
to reconsider and rectify his earlier estimates, and, from the 
doubt that is "hungry, and barren, and sharp as the sea," 
craves and seeks relief, finding it at length, if not in faith, at 
least in something akin thereto a nascent sense of a sympa- 
thising consciousness beyond his own. of subtle intimations of 
an all-pervasive presence of a living Spirit. 

It is not, however, my primary purpose to show that, 
owing to its essential nature, the postulate of a God can find 
no place among the principles of an enterprise whose aim is a 
thorough-going explanation of the universe in mechanical 
terms, nor to argue at length that that high emprise is destined 
to fail for the reason, among others, that one of the phenomena 
to be explained is the felt promise in an ideal eternally at war 
with the quality of the explanation the passionate longing, I 



MATHEMATICS AND THEOLOGY 377 

mean, for release from the fixity of mechanism ; aspiration to 
a spiritual freedom infinitely above and beyond every shuttle- 
cock conception of the universe. 

Important as are the quoted affirmations of Laplace and 
Lagrange, the weight of their significance lies, not in the 
differing declarations as such, but in their common point of 
view, in what neither one asserts but both of them imply, 
namely, that God is an hypothesis. Far be it from me to 
contend that God is that and nothing more. For not every 
logos is rational. And doubtless Theology, broadly conceived 
in accordance with its etymological sense, is vastly less and 
vastly more than scientific, not confined to deductive pro- 
cesses and theorematic content, but embracing a measureless 
wealth of emotional expression as well, the rapturous eloquence 
of prophet and seer, the songs and prayers of saints and 
martyrs, religious poetry and the voice of sacred music all 
discourse of holy things the silent testimony, too, of the 
cathedral church with its solemn pictures and statuary in a 
word, the sacred literature and sacred art of more than the 
Western World. Neither do I deny that, so far from being a 
mere hypothesis, God may be a real being whose reality is, at 
times, to persons of a certain temperament, an immediate 
object of a genuine kind of knowledge, not only such know- 
ledge as the mystic asseverates that he possesses, but also a 
kind of certitude that though it is, like the mystic's, ineffable 
-yet is possible to the natural intellect the kind of certitude, 
for example, that one may have of purposefulness of the 
universe who has repeatedly and seriously sought to deny it 
that quality, not merely in words, which is easy, but in a vivid 
sense (hard to gain) of the denial's essential meaning, and who, 
having won that sense, perhaps a hundred times in the course 
of thirty years, has each time lost it immediately, like the pass- 
ing shadow of a flitting bird, a mid-day moment's dream of 
darkness at once dissolved in the light, a cut in consciousness 
instantly closed like a cleft in a sea : the denial of purpose being 
no sooner achieved in feeling than it has been completely over- 



378 THE HIBBERT JOURNAL 

whelmed by the inrushing flood of the query : What then is it 
for ? as if some suddenly roused instinct, vital to Intelligence, 
had leaped to the defence of its threatened integrity and life. 

But, after all such claims have been freely and fully 
allowed, the fact is clear that, for Theology regarded as a 
purely scientific activity, addressing itself to the average or 
standard intellect, appealing to the normal understanding, 
abiding by the accepted rules of evidence and argumentation, 
God is an hypothesis and nothing more. For the rapt vision 
of the seer, faith's evidence of things not seen, the mystic's 
immediate sense of divine communion, the above-mentioned 
certitude of cosmic purposefulness, all of these and such as 
these being by nature personal, private, ineffable, incommuni- 
cable experiences, are none of them forms of scientific know- 
ledge ; because scientific knowledge always is, potentially at 
least, impersonal, public, effable, communicable, sharply dis- 
criminated from other varieties of knowledge by its social 
character, by its transmissibility from mind to mind. 

Here, then, we are face to face with the naked theme of 
our meditation : the supreme assumption of the human in- 
tellect its last refuge the Hypothesis, namely, of a being 
called God. How shall we frame it in speech ? How describe 
the august Being it seeks to represent? Appeal to the 
greatest physical philosopher of all time calls forth from the 
author of the Principia and inventor of the Calculus the terse 
reply : " A Being eternal, infinite, absolutely perfect." Ask 
him whose genius it was that conceived and produced the 
indissoluble alliance between the doctrines of Number and 
Space, brought together the sundered hemispheres of apodictic 
thought and thus created the world of Analytic Geometry. 
" Infinite, eternal, immutable, independent, all-knowing, all- 
powerful" such are the resounding terms of Descartes' 
response. Similarly impressive the penetrating characterisa- 
tion heard on turning to the " God-intoxicated " philosopher 
of Amsterdam : " Absolutely infinite, consisting of infinite 
attributes, each expressing eternal and infinite essentiality." 



MATHEMATICS AND THEOLOGY 379 

These familiar citations will serve to remind the reader of the 
best efforts of human thought to give adequate formulation 
to the hypothesis of God. As an hypothesis it stands alone. 
The hypotheses that we meet elsewhere, as the nebular, the 
corpuscular, the ionic, the atomic, the molecular, the hypo- 
theses of a space-pervading aether, of universal gravitation, 
of organic evolution, of conservation of energy and of mass, 
all such have in common a certain mark which that one does 
not possess, namely, they divide in order to conquer, each of 
them is restricted to some fragment of reality, confined to a 
field that is bounded, while on the contrary the hypothesis of 
God is distinguished by the fact that it alone attempts to span 
and bind the Whole. The all-embracing questions are : 
What does it mean ? What is it worth ? The latter question 
I do not here propound, but shall address myself to the former 
alone, attempting no estimate of worth except incidentally and 
in so far as judgment of value naturally accompanies deter- 
mination of sense. 

" The light of human minds," says Hobbes, " is perspicuous 
words, but by exact definitions first snuffed and purged from 
ambiguity." I ask : what, if any, precise meaning, available 
for the purposes of discourse that aspires or pretends to rigour, 
may be assigned to the fundamental adjectives of theological 
terminology ? Infinite, Eternal, Omnipotent, Omniscient, 
Omnipresent, and the rest : are these mighty terms, these vast 
resounding voices from the deeps of Feeling, destined to none 
but emotional significance ? Are they to be confined for ever 
to the impulsatory offices of Poetry and Prayer? Or is it 
possible to define them sharply as concepts, to confer upon 
them the character of scientific notions, and thus, while 
preserving their power to express emotion and energise life, 
make them sources of light as well ? I hold that, by virtue 
of certain modern developments in Mathematics, such an 
achievement is become possible, and I shall proceed at once, 
in the simplest terms at my command, to point out what 
appears to me the way to at least a partial vindication of the 



380 THE HIBBERT JOURNAL 

claim. To that end I bespeak the generous co-operation of 
the reader's patience and attention, more especially so, as the 
initial considerations to be adduced cannot but seem dreary 
and dull, resembling more the forbidding approach to an arid 
plain than an entrance to a valley of fruits. 

No one can have failed to observe that among the pro- 
perties of the Being hypothetised by Theology there is one 
that has the distinction of appearing both explicitly and 
implicitly, of being at the same time co-ordinate with the 
other properties and involved in each of them. That pre- 
eminent property, as I scarcely need point out, is the attribute 
of Infinity. If this central term, about which the self-styled 
" queen of all the sciences" has been eloquently discoursing 
for thousands of years without giving it a single definition 
available for scientific use, can be completely shorn of its 
indetermination, and thus brought at length under the 
dominion of Logic, the like submission of the related terms 
will readily follow, and the long-coveted, long-awaited ad- 
vancement of Theology from the position of a merely specu- 
lative philosophy to the rank of a genuine science will have 
been begun. Other means to that high desideratum I can 
imagine none. Fortunately, it so happens that there is not 
to be found in Science, not even in the domain of Mathematics 
the very home and fatherland of precision a single idea, 
notion, or concept that is more clearly or sharply defined than 
is the concept of Infinitude. And there strangely enough 
for nearly half a century it has in vain awaited appropriation 
by Theological thought. 

I shall present the concept by aid of two simplest examples 
drawn respectively from the doctrines of Number and Space. 
Imagine the surfaces of two concentric spheres, the surface l of 
the inner one white and named the silver sphere, the surface 
of the outer one yellow and called the golden sphere. Next 
imagine the sheaf (as it is called) of rays consisting of all the 

1 The terms " sphere " and u surface of sphere " are herein used as 
equivalent, in accordance with usage in higher geometry. 



MATHEMATICS AND THEOLOGY 881 

straight lines that have their beginning at the centre of the 
spheres and thence extend outward indefinitely in every 
direction. It is plain that any ray, R, of the sheaf pierces the 
silver sphere in a point, say S 9 and the golden one in a point, 
say 6r. Calling S and G a pair of points, it is evident that, 
by considering all the rays of the sheaf, the points of the one 
sphere are paired with those of the other a unique and 
reciprocal, or one-to-one, correspondence being thus established 
between the points of the silver and of the golden sphere. We 
see at once that the number of points on the silver sphere, 
however small, is the same as the number of the points on the 
golden one, however large, and, moreover, that this number is 
precisely the same as that of the rays of the sheaf. Now 
conceive a curve red, if you like, for the sake of vividness 
to be drawn on the golden sphere and enclosing on it a region, 
', exactly equal in area to that of the silver sphere. The 
lumber of points in the region A is, of course, the same as 
ie number on the silver sphere, and is, therefore, the same 
the number on the golden one. But the points in the 
[ion A constitute only apart of the whole of the points on 
ie golden sphere. At once it is seen and the fact is of the 
rery utmost importance that we have here a part the 
isemble of points in the region A and a whole the ensemble 
>f points in the golden sphere such that the number of 
)ints constituting the part is precisely the same as the 
mmber of those constituting the whole. It is to be noted 
jfully and once for all that the equality subsists, not 
between the area of the region A and that of the golden 
sphere, but between two point collections, the part collection 
in the region A and the whole collection upon the sphere. 
By virtue of this equality of whole and part, the whole is 
said to be infinite, and it follows, of course, that the adjective 
applies to the equal part as well. We are now prepared to 
grasp easily and firmly the general definition of the concept J 

1 The terms "infinite" and its synonyms are employed in all that follows, 
not in their literary, but in their scientific sense. 



382 THE HIBBERT JOURNAL 

of Infinitude : a collection, class, set, group, aggregate, 
ensemble, manifold, or multitude of elements be these points 
or passions, ions or ideas, relations or terms, quantities or 
qualities, tones of colour or shadings of sound, degrees of 
wisdom or goodness or power, or any other forms, or modes 
or determinations is infinite if and only if the collection, like 
the ensemble of points on a sphere, contains a part, or sub- 
collection, that is numerically equal to the whole. On the 
other hand, a collection is finite if and only if, like the col- 
lection of trees in yonder forest or that of the sands of the 
sea or that of the stars within the range of telescopic vision, 
it contains no part, or sub-collection of the same kind, 
numerically equal to the whole. Let not the reader be here 
deceived. He is not invited to a feast of mere opinion, but is 
asked to open his eyes and behold for himself. There stand 
the two concepts, absolutely clear ; and there, too, stand the 
validating facts, absolutely unmistakable. The latter indeed 
may be multiplied at will. Examples illustrating the concept 
of finitude are of course familiar to all, being forced upon the 
attention by the vulgar necessities of life. Those illustrating 
the concept of infinitude, though they are less familiar, yet 
abound in even greater profusion, being found in the great 
and the small, the remote and the near, in Number, in Space, 
in Time, in qualitative distinctions, in the realm of pure 
relation wherever the human intellect may penetrate if the 
inner eye be only disciplined to detect their omnipresence. 
Let us return for a moment to our image of the sheaf and 
the spheres. Consider those rays of the sheaf that pierce 
the points of the region A on the golden sphere. Let us call 
the group of these rays a bundle. It is evident that the 
number of rays of the bundle is the same as the number 
of the points of the region A ; this number, we have seen, 
is the same as the number of points of the sphere; and 
this, again, the same as the number of the rays of the sheaf; 
whence it follows that the bundle, though but part of 
the sheaf, is equal in number to the whole ; so that the sheaf 



MATHEMATICS AND THEOLOGY 383 

and the bundle serve alike to exemplify again the notion of 
infinite manifolds. 

For a simplest example drawn from the inexhaustible 
resources of another field, consider the two sequences of 
integers : 

(W) 1,2, 3, 4, 5, 6 ,, + !, 

(P) 2, 4, 6, 8, 10, 12, 2ft, 2(+ 1) 

By the series (W) of symbols I wish to call attention, not 
to that uncompleted row of marks itself, but to a certain 
definite invisible whole that the row suggests and serves to 
bring as an object before the mind, namely : the totality of the 
positive integers. On being confronted with the notion of 
this fundamental totality, at once so clear to thought and so 
baffling to imagination, many persons, especially the unin- 
itiated, become restive for a time. A little reflection, however, 
will dissipate any reasonable scepticism, and show that our 
footing here is solid rock. It is true indeed that, however 
many integers we may singly specify or imagine, there always 
remain more and more. It is also true that the hand cannot 
actually write nor the physical eye behold a set of symbols 
matching one-to-one all the integers composing the asserted 
totality, if such a thing there be. What of it ? Consider, for 
a moment, a familiar totality so obvious that none may question 
it the totality, I mean, of the points of a circle. As in the 
case of the integers, so here, too, it is impossible to think all 
the points singly or singly to specify or symbolise them all. 
Yet there they are not one now and then another but all of 
them at once, a totality persisting as such and unescapable. 
What is the secret ? The secret is that the totality is a con- 
ceptual thing, a thing for thought and not for sense or imagina- 
tion, a thing carved out by a law transcending the powers of 
step-by-step perception and depiction, a law of definition that 
selects out of the universe of thinkable things a set of them 
unambiguously the law, namely, that the things shall be 
points of a plane and be all of them equally distant from a 
point therein. So it is precisely with the totality of positive 



384 THE HIBBERT JOURNAL 

integers. It does not exist for sense or imagination, it exists 
for thought, deriving its character as a totality, its completeness 
and one-ness, from the completeness and one-ness of the selec- 
tive law defining it the law, namely, that besides any definite 
integer there is another greater than that by one. Hereby 
inclusion and exclusion are both of them decisive, instantaneous, 
complete ; and the things law-selected are bound and held 
together by the definition as by an encircling band. Is it yet 
objected that, if the integers be thought as arranged in a series, 
the latter extends beyond every assignable limit and is never 
completed ? The objection originates in confusion of thought, 
and I reply: (1) that such a series, though having no end, 
would not, therefore, be incomplete, for endlessness is as 
definite a character as that of having an end ; (2) that, though 
integer-symbols being spatial things may be arranged in 
a spatial series, integers themselves being never "naked 
to the visible eye" need not be thought as so arranged 
even if such an ordering were not strictly impossible; and 
(3) that the objection is decisively overthrown by the single 
consideration of its lying equally against regarding as a 
totality the points constituting, for example, an hyperbola, 
since each branch of the curve on which they lie extends 
outward and upward beyond every assignable bound. The 
fact is that it is precisely such sense-transcending totalities 
that constitute the essential subject-matter of rigorous 
thought, and to deny their validity would be to evacuate 
the Reason of all content and bar even the very possibility 
of Science. 

We may, then, with the utmost confidence in the soundness 
of our footing, resume the advance. Comparing the totality 
(W) of integers with the totality (P) of even integers, it is 
immediately evident that a unique and reciprocal correspondence 
subsists between the numbers of ( W) and those of (P), as indi- 
cated by the sequence of pairs : 

(T) 1, 2; 2, 4; 3, 6; 4, 8; . . . ; n, 2 ; n+1, 2(n+l); . . . . 

Note that the pairing is no creeping performance that never 



MATHEMATICS AND THEOLOGY 385 

gets performed ; neither is it a lightning process, for this were 
as helpless before the task of pairing the totalities step by step 
as the pace of a snail. No, the pairing is a deed of law wrought 
instantaneously, without lapse of time. The law is : each 
number shall go with its double. And its effect is simultaneous 
with its enactment. To choose the law is to say : " Let the 
pairing be done " ; and behold ! it is done. It is only contem- 
plation of the deed and not the doing of it that requires time. 
There is possible a yet deeper view of the matter, namely, the 
static view. We may say, that is, that the integers as elements 
of the existing ideal world already stand at once in all sorts of 
possible interrelations, among them the relation in question, 
and that to choose the mentioned law of association in pairs is 
not indeed to enact that relation, for it subsisted before the 
choice, but is merely to select it from other relations in similar 
case in a word, to designate by a single act of will the pair- 
totality ( T) already existing prior to the designation. Which- 
ever view of the matter be taken and either is admissible for 
the purpose in hand it is clear that a one-to-one relation does 
subsist between the elements of ( W} and the elements of (P). 
The totalities are therefore equally rich in elements : the 
number of integers in the one is the same as that of the other. 
But every integer in (P) is an integer in ( JF), while ( W] has 
integers that are not in (P). Hence (P) is a part of which 
( W] is the whole ; and hence ( W] is an infinite collection and 
so is (P). 

It is needless here further to multiply examples. " These 
slight footprints suffice to enable a keen-searching mind to 
find out all the rest" no, not all, as the maddened poet 
sang, but enough and more. For to eyes once open the 
brood of the infinite is everywhere, the light of the great 
concept gleaming and glittering in every aspect of being. In 
the entire domain of Reality there is no conceivable manifold 
of things but either it contains or does not contain a part 
that, in the sense already defined, perfectly matches in 

elemental wealth and in dignity of structure the whole to 
VOL. VII. No. 2. 25 



386 THE HIBBERT JOURNAL 

which it belongs. By this potent principle, so simple indeed 
as to have eluded the eye of thought for thousands of years, 
the Universe of thinkable things is riven completely asunder. 
The cleavage, however, is not a spatial one, it is purely 
logical, and the two grand divisions the realm of the finite 
and the realm of the infinite marvellously interlocked, 
together constitute the dual abode of dual-natured man. 
The former is the domain of Practical Life ; it contains no 
magnitudes but man may measure them, as the rim of a 
continent, the speed of light, the volume of a star ; no 
multitudes but man may count them the coins in the coffer, 
the cattle in the field, the deeds of a hero, the years of an 
empire ; no series or room or manifold, no whole whatever, 
but is more than a match for its every part: the world of 
things that are finite is strictly as an island- world suspent 
in a sea. The other division the realm of infinite things 
that is the immersing sea, an ocean without bottom or surface 
or shore. It contains no totalities but such as are law- 
defined, never a whole of any kind that has not countless 
parts each matching it perfectly in respect of number, coequal 
with it in Machtigkeit as it is called, in potence or power, 
in complexity of structure, in dignity and wealth of Reality. 
This is the domain of the Reason, the dwelling-place of those 
universals of thought that so persistently haunted the soul 
of Fichte and attuned his faculties to an almost lyrical 
key of philosophic exposition ; here sense and imagination 
are transcended ; here and here alone are the objects of 
knowledge proper, for, as Poincare' has justly remarked 
of a multiplicity, unless it is infinite, a science is strictly 
impossible. 

" Granted," says one, " in itself what has been said is well 
enough. What of it ? Where, pray, is Deity ? I ask for 
bread and am given a stone: for a vision of God, and am 
invited to thread endless mazes of mathematics, to con- 
template the vast and dazzling splendours of number and 
space. Let it be done. What does it all avail ? 



MATHEMATICS AND THEOLOGY 887 

"I heap up numbers enormous, 
Mountains of millions extend, 
I pile time up on time, 
World on world without end, 
And when I from the awful height 
Would a vision of Thee behold : 
The total sum of number's Might, 
Though multiplied a thousandfold, 
Is yet no part of Thee." ] 

The protest is temperamental. It is an unwitting con- 
fession : the familiar voice of Imagination proclaiming its 
natural inability to follow in the wake of Thought. Imagina- 
tion and Thought. It is the amazing failure, well-nigh 
universal, to distinguish between these powers that has 
permitted multitudes of thinkers, even so virile a one as 
Hobbes, to contend that what is infinite cannot be known. 
It is true indeed that whatsoever is infinite does transcend 
the photographic faculties of the intellect, but not the con- 
ceptual, not the logical. Ignorabimus is the surrendering cry 
of the Imagination. For Thought the Unknowable does not 
exist. I have made no promise of a " vision " of God. My 
aim, I repeat, is to rescue from indetermination and obscurity 
the terms of the hypothesis God, to give character and form 
to the vast amorphous shapes that waver there and shift in the 
fog and dusk of speculation, to convert the nebulous termin- 
ology into symbols of concepts, and thus in a measure to 
beget or to justify the hope that the shadowland of Theology 
may yet be invaded with conquering engines of Scientific light. 

And the heart of the enterprise is quickened by many a 
high consideration. How familiar the old despairing words : 
None but the infinite can comprehend the infinite ! How often 
they have been solemnly pronounced 2 in courts of philosophy 
and sunken in the soul like a leaden decree of fate, an un- 
appealable sentence of doom ! Where is the place, and where 

1 Haller, Ich haufe ungehaure Zahlen, etc., cited by Hegel in his Logik. 

2 To cite only the latest instance, we find Mr Frederic Harrison in his 
Philosophy of' Common Sense, p. 27, repeating the old cry in the form : " Does 
the Infinite Universe through Space conform to the modes of mind of the 
human mites of this planetary speck ? " 



388 THE HIBBERT JOURNAL 

the time in the course of nearly two thousand years, that the 
voice of authority, from peasant priest to the Pope of Rome, 
has not laid them as an interdict on the intellects of men ? 
The maxim itself is true ; but false and pernicious the im- 
plication that man is a puny creature who should be for ever 
content to devote his flickering finite faculties, in meekness 
and fear and shame, to worship and adoration of majesty and 
might that he may never, without presumption and folly, 
even aspire to comprehend. For long, alas ! was the human 
soul destined to cower in the fearful night of that impious 
piety. But not for aye. Thanks to the invincible spirit of 
thought, Day is come at length, and it is ours to dwell in the 
morning. The sword of Mathesis has rent the veil asunder, 
stripped the pall from the consciousness of man, and there ! 
behold ! what the sudden apparition that startles his gaze ? 
Awful apocalypse, astounding revelation that he himself is 
infinite. Can it be a fact ? Or is it only a dream, a feverish 
fancy of his long-imprisoned mind ? It is a fact. No certi- 
tude of Science, none in Mathematics, is better ascertained. 
But how ? It is not merely an inference from universal dis- 
content with partial knowledge, not merely faith in the felt 
promise of the intellect's unquenchable passion to know the 
whole. Such evidence, old as the intellect itself, is not indeed 
to be despised, but it does not convince. It is rather a pro- 
phecy than a demonstration, a harbinger of proof than proof 
itself. No, it is not from such sources that the fact derives 
its certitude, but from two considerations that render it abso- 
lutely indubitable. One of these is the rigorous demonstration 
by Richard Dedekind 1 that the world of man's ideas as ideas 
the human Gedankenwelt as the author calls it is strictly 
an infinite manifold. Shorn of context and non-essentials, 
the proof may be rendered in a line, and the reader, if he has 
been attentive, is prepared to grasp it at once. Denote by 

1 Was sind und was sollen die Zahlen. Also published in English under 
the title, The Nature and Meaning of Number, by the Open Court Publishing 
Co., Chicago, Ills., U.S.A. 



MATHEMATICS AND THEOLOGY 889 

G the whole Gedankenwelt, by / any idea therein, as that of 
a song, a deed of charity, a diamond, a birth or a death ; by I I 
the idea of 7 ; by 7 2 that of 7 X ; and, generally, by 7 n+1 that of 
7 n . As any thought may itself be object of another thought, 
7 n+1 can never fail, and so we have the two totalities : 
(T) /, /i, 4 , 4, 4+u , 

\ * ) *!> *-2i -*3. } 4+l 4+2> > 

the latter a part of the former, and both of them parts of G. 
Now pair (T) with ( J"), as shown in the following scheme : 

** *1 5 M *** > 4) 4+1 j 4+l> 4+2 

At once it is seen that the whole totality (T) is perfectly 
matched by its part (T f ). Whence it follows that ( T) and 
( J"), and, a fortiori, their common container G, are infinite, 
each and all. A demonstration so simple and clear that even 
the secular mind of a child may understand it, and yet so 
unimposing, so free from pomp and circumstance, that, 
despite its revelation of the infinite range and wealth of the 
ideal realm of the human soul, the theologically wise are wont 
to pass it by unwitting or unimpressed. But not even these, 
it would seem, can remain for ever blind to the second con- 
sideration, for it points to the achievements, the flaming deeds 
themselves, of the prowess that the former serves to reveal 
only by pale subtleties of argument. 

" Hier 1st es Zeit, durch Thaten zu beweisen, 
Dass Manneswiirde nicht der Gotterhohe weicht." 

What, you ask, can the exploits be ? I answer : within the 
memory of living men, human Thought, emboldened by 
achievement and a deepening sense of its boundless resources, 
borne aloft and onward by the burning ardour of its own 
genius as by a chariot of fire, has not only passed the utmost 
walls of the finite world, but established there, far beyond the 
ancient borders, the dominion of Logic ; and there, within the 
realm of transfinite being, Mannigfaltigkeitslehre? mightiest 

1 A well-nigh complete bibliography of this transfinite movement of 
thought is found in Young's Theory of Point Sets. No other memoirs on the 
subject afford the reader so profound a view of its abysses as do those by 



390 THE HIBBERT JOURNAL 

among the empires of Reason, flourishes to-day, its radiance 
and power not only pervading the entire domain of mathe- 
matics but destined also to reach and penetrate every branch 
of knowledge and speculation. There the sether of thought 
pervades the infinite and eternal, 

"Times unending 
Comprehending, 
Space and worlds of worlds transcending." 1 

There Man is seen transfigured in the light of his genius, the 
soul comes to a sense of its own and " yields not in dignity to 
grandeur divine." 

In the presence of such a vision, the terrors of Naturalism 
dwindle and vanish. Kant's exclamation that "modern 
astronomy has annihilated my own importance" ceases to 
have significance. We desire no instauration of the shallow 
and timid humanism that derived its estimate of man 
from a geocentric theory of the universe, cried alarm at the 
crumbling of a Mosaic cosmogony, and still shudders at the 
shrinking of the earth to a pebble in the cosmic perspective 
opened to the view by modern science. For that is no 
material scene the mathetic mount of Humanity's trans- 
figuration. And when Theology shall have learned, like 
Mathesis, to disdain the expanding bigness of the external 
universe, to discern the presence of " infinite riches in a little 
room," to behold with the inner eye, in the supersensuous 
world of Thought, the sublime dignity, the infinite power, the 
divine stature of Man, the droning organs of sacred discipline 
will become mighty instruments of inspiration. 2 

CASSIUS J. KEYSER. 

COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY. 

Georg Cantor, easily the Primate of all who have contributed to its 
development. 

1 From the prize poem, " The Merman and the Seraph," by Wm. Benjamin 
Smith, in Poet 'Lore, Boston. 

2 A concluding article, by the same author, will appear in the April issue. 
The reader is further referred to the article "The Concept of the Infinite," 
by Professor Royce, in the HIBBERT JOURNAL for October 1902. EDITOR. 



A GREAT REFORM IN THE TREAT- 
MENT OF CRIMINALS. 

PROBATION AND CHILDREN'S COURTS 
IN ITALY. 

Miss LUCY C. BARTLETT, 

Of the Howard Association. 

THE first society for the application of Probation in Italy was 
founded at Rome on 10th May 1906. In this past year 
three similar societies have been founded at Milan, Turin, and 
Florence, while a ministerial circular issued on 10th May last 
provides for the separate hearing of juvenile cases in other 
words, marks the commencement of Children's Courts in Italy. 

These results, as will easily be understood, have not been 
obtained without much effort, and the whole story of the 
struggle may perhaps have interest for those who care to 
trace the development of reforms. But that which lends to 
this movement a special interest is the fact that it has been 
entirely due to private initiative, and the initiative in most 
cases of very young people. The movement has now the 
royal patronage, and is assisted by a Government subsidy, while 
many notable men of the political and legal worlds are con- 
tent to give it their support. But for its commencement 
and development it depended upon the faith and energy of a 
few young men, all under thirty years of age, and with them 
to-day, in great part at least, lies the merit of the success. 

When, four years ago, I first began to speak in Rome of 
the possibility of applying the American Probation system 



391 



.392 THE HIBBERT JOURNAL 

in Italy, most people told me 1 was mad. Some few gave 
me encouragement, but most people thought I was attempt- 
ing a hopeless task. But I was sufficiently sanguine to sail 
for America in the March of that year, 1905, to study the 
system in the land of its birth. I gave three months to this 
study, and returned to Europe with my plans matured. 

For in the city of Indianapolis I had found a system 
which I thought possible to transplant to Italy. It was the 
volunteer system the system of employing only some three 
paid Probation officers to do the work of organisation and 
preliminary investigation, and for all the visitation and 
supervision of the children the moral side of the work- 
relying on volunteer aid. 

This system which I found in Indianapolis was the first 
which brought me a solution of my problems. For the 
difficulties which faced me in Italy were two: the impossi- 
bility of finding the money for many salaries the im- 
possibility, amongst paid officials, of finding the right kind 
of men for the moral side of the work. 

But, watching the system of Indianapolis, my hopes rose 
high. I believed that I could find volunteers similar to 
these in Italy. And it was no small encouragement to me 
to find the Indianapolis system not only feasible for my 
purposes, but also, as I judged it, by far the best in America. 
Nowhere else had I found such accuracy of supervision 
and such intimacy of relationship as in this Court where 
volunteer citizens were used for the care of the children. 
And the explanation was not far to seek. Where a paid 
officer must needs, for economy's sake, be asked to supervise 
as many as two hundred cases sometimes, these volunteers 
had never more than two or three under their care. The 
tie with the child was close and personal. The volunteers, 
too, had been carefully chosen not all who had offered 
themselves for the work had been appointed. But so great 
was the interest of the citizens that, even after elimination, 
it had been possible to form a band of one hundred and 



PROBATION OF CRIMINALS 393 

twenty-five, including doctors, men of business, ministers of 
every cult, and some ladies of wealth all fitted, and eager 
to lend themselves to this work of child-saving. I par- 
ticipated in the work of Indianapolis for some two weeks 
or more, attending the trials of the Juvenile Court and 
accompanying the officers on their visits, and it was with a 
high ideal of what Probation might be that I returned to 
Rome in the autumn of 1905. 

My ideals I shared at once with a young doctor in law, 
Signor Emilio Re, and it is from this time on that I say the 
young men of Italy are responsible for the success which has 
been gained. This success has been too much ascribed to 
me, I being called everywhere the founder of this work. But 
in reality I did no more than bring the idea it is with the 
youth of Italy that the credit of its application lies. 

Signor Re at once gave to my ideas an Italian setting. He 
explained to me the Italian law on which they could be based. 
This Italian law, known as the Conditional Condemnation, is 
somewhat similar to the First Offenders Act of England, 
which was repealed with the passing of the new Probation 
Act in August 1907. According to its provisions, minors, 
women, and men over seventy, who have committed a first 
offence worthy of not more than one year's imprisonment, may 
be left at liberty, under the condition that they be not re- 
convicted within a period fixed by the judge ; the same 
privilege is accorded to men between the ages of eighteen and 
seventy, guilty of a first offence, if this offence has merited 
not more than six months' imprisonment. This law was 
passed in Italy in June 1904 ; as will be seen, it gives the first 
offender his liberty, but gives him no assistance to use that 
liberty worthily. 

This hiatus, which has ever constituted the weakness of 
all European laws of pardon, we in Rome desired to remedy 
by founding a society which should offer to minors receiving 
the Conditional Condemnation that assistance which the 
Probation Officer affords in America. We realised that our 



394 THE HIBBERT JOURNAL 

work could not be equally efficient, since our volunteer officers 
would not have the weight of the law behind them in their 
supervision, but still we believed that it would be possible to 
achieve something, and that in this way a species of Probation 
might be introduced. 

Signor Re first sought to form a band of young men who 
would promise themselves as volunteer officers after the 
fashion of Indianapolis. In this he succeeded without much 
difficulty : ere long fifteen young men, mostly young advocates, 
had promised their services. But it was desirable for an 
experiment as novel as ours to have some strong patrons, 
and here the first difficulty arose which tested the mettle of 
these young volunteers, and, deciding the whole future of the 
work, gave to them its glory. 

Our strongest patron at this time was a certain deputy, 
a well-known penalist, a counsellor of the Court of Appeal, 
and a man who had considerable influence with the Govern- 
ment. It was indeed through his influence that we had been 
led to expect that our experiment, when floated, would be 
assisted by a Government subsidy. He had also spoken of 
the work in Parliament, and as our ultimate hope was that 
our experiment might one day lead to an amendment of the 
law, this deputy was for us a very important personage. 

Our dismay may therefore be imagined when, after five 
months of weary preparation and delays, he suddenly announced 
that the plan of action must be changed, or he must withdraw 
his support. The work, he said, must not be founded on the 
Conditional Condemnation, but on certain clauses of the civil 
code, according to which rebellious children, denounced as 
such by their parents to a magistrate, can be sent to a reforma- 
tory. Some of these cases he desired should instead be given 
over to our care, and located with families in the country. 
It was a boarding-out system he desired. Probation vanished 
into thin air, for the children so placed would have been 
beyond the reach of our volunteers visiting would have 
become impossible. Further, it would have been no penal 



PROBATION OF CRIMINALS 395 

reform we should have been promoting along these lines, for 
these children have not offended against the penal code they 
are merely misdemeanants, often not even that, but merely 
the children of parents who wish to get rid of them. 

In short, we saw the whole structure of our work crumbling 
if we accepted this deputy's plan ; yet, on the other side, if we 
rejected it, we should lose not only his support, but that of 
the Government we should be throwing away every prop we 
possessed, before our work was even launched. It was surely 
a situation which tempted to compromise, if not surrender. 
Yet these young men stooped to neither, and in that they 
proved their fitness for future conquest. 

On the 8th April of that year, 1906, the decisive meeting 
was held. Everything in the way of conciliation was attempted. 
A well-known professor of jurisprudence of the Rome University, 
Professor Ottolenghi, voiced our views ; of the fifteen people 
present, twelve voted for the Conditional Condemnation as 
the basis of our work. But still the deputy mentioned re- 
mained obdurate, and after two hours of weary debate he still 
held to his ultimatum his plan, or his retirement. With one 
accord we then accepted the latter, and he withdrew, taking 
with him, as we had expected, the Government representative. 

In this way did the work begin in Rome with a struggle 
which decided from the outset what the type of the work was 
to be whether it was to be based on principles or personages. 
The difficulties served as a veritable threshing-machine. 
" You have ruined everything ! " was the comment of this 
deputy's secretary to me in the hour that I let his chief depart. 
But I felt rather that everything had been saved. Not only 
had a right basis been secured, but the volunteers had passed 
a test which proved their fitness for the future work. 

For it should ever be remembered that that which makes 
the whole force of Probation is the quality of the workers 
who engage in it. It is a system which calls for the influence 
of character on character. The offender is left at liberty 
instead of being shut within prison walls : the desire is to 



396 THE HIBBERT JOURNAL 

persuade him to a permanent amendment, rather than force 
him thereto for a limited period. Coercion, with subsequent 
relapse, has been found unsatisfactory prison walls are losing 
the public confidence gentler and more educative methods, 
represented by systems like Probation, are winning an attentive 
hearing. And in substituting educative for coercive ideas the 
public is undoubtedly making a great step forward. But 
there is danger lest the reform stop at ideas. Education in 
its deepest sense education of the heart and character can 
never be communicated, it should be remembered, by any 
system. This is always a question of personal influence. A 
large corps of badly chosen Probation officers might visit 
regularly, and accomplish exactly nothing, in a moral sense. 
A few of the right kind, struggling even with enormous 
difficulties, can accomplish much. 

This was the root of my confidence in the